


Jailbreak

by orphan_account



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Bounty Hunters, Canon-Typical Violence, English/Spanish, F/M, Getting to Know Each Other, On the Run, Original Sassmasters, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Prison, Post-Season 2, Reunion of Ex-Lovers, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-26 01:24:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 60,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6218167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick Sanchez is a wanted man, whether out in the open or behind a triple-layered security matrix. When he's broken out of Galactic Federation custody by an unknown individual, the multiverse is thrown into a tailspin trying to find him. Morty and Summer are among those looking, and what they learn on their journey will flip their whole world on its head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Sweet Taste of Freedom

**The Savior**

_Jesus Christo,_ he looks pathetic hanging up there. Actually, the whole scene is a bit like the Crucifixion mixed with amateur bondage—splayed out with all the good bits to see. His head lolls off to one side, drooling. His hands droop at the wrists like wilted bony flowers. The leather belt they have strapped across his middle gives a little with each outward breath. Judging by the heavy bags under his eyes, this is probably the most sleep he’s had in a long while, and I’m sure those Gromflomites took their sweet time giving him any tranquilizers to get him there. Hopefully he won’t wake up for this.

            Why isn’t a Galactic Federation prison more well-guarded? I slice through his metal wrist cuffs like they’re butter with my laser. I mean, honestly, are they so smug as to think they have some impenetrable fortress here? Sure, the cross-hatched triple-layered infrared matrix is new, as are the improved biometric scanners to get into the max security section. But claws can be cut off, and those matrix layers can be shut off by blasting out three particular sensors. This is almost laughable!

            It _would_ be laughable, anyway, if I were jailbreaking anyone other than him. I hope to God whatever drugs they managed to stick in his neck are enough to keep him asleep, because this whole plan could go to hell in a pretty hand-basket if he wakes up. I press my fingers along his jugular until I find the puffy injection marks. He always did bruise so easily.

            He flops against my shoulder like a sack of flour once I cut the last cuff open; it takes all my core strength not to tip over, too. Rick may look willowy, but he’s heavy. I let him drop to the hovercar floor as quietly as possible, cover him with a blanket and several oily rags, and get in the driver’s seat. I’m just about to flip the main engine on when two buggy guards pop up.

            _Fantastico._

“Halt!” one of them barks—or clicks, whatever one with mandibles does. “What business do you have with Prisoner 7C5-137?”

            “Routine medical check-up,” I lie smoothly. “His vitals have been on overall decline for the past week or so, not that I’d expect the two of you to know that.

            The two guards share a glance. They couldn’t really argue with me, because what would they know about human physiology? Earth is the Federation’s most recent “project,” as the higher-ups like to call it. All the knowledge the Federation has on humans comes from the select few they’ve allowed to work for them. Like me.

            Correction: I _used_ to work for the Federation full-time. But let’s just say there are better-paying clients out there who appreciate my services.

            “So,” I continue, “unless you want the Galactic Federation’s most valuable prisoner to grow even weaker and potentially die on your watch, I’d suggest you move out of my way and let me get to the infirmary with him so he can get proper treatment.”

            Move they did, and quickly. Threats are good motivations for Gromflomites, I’ve found. Bless the nurse who’d blurted all this medical information about Rick at gunpoint. She’d really helped me out of this jam, but it was nothing I couldn’t have learned if I’d had five extra minutes to spend alone with him. I knew him too well.

            I drive as quietly as possible to the slate-gray wall of the max security vault. That’s right, they call this a _vault_. Probably because it’s massive, heavily locked (bullshit), and stocked with their most treasured, valuable prisoners. Well, guess what, Feds? I’m flying out of here undetected with your biggest diamond in my back pock—

            Oh _mierde._ The portal gun! I frantically paw under my seat and sigh in relief when I lay my hand on it. I’d had to dodge several sketchier levels of security to get this, and what good is a tool if you don’t have the instructions to use it properly? Not that it’d be easy getting those instructions out of him: giving an alligator a root canal would be easier and less painful.

            A klaxon blares behind me. The blast-proof doors start to lower. _Hijo de puta!_ Who found out I was in here? Bugs fly at me from all sides, limbs and guns flailing. I pull out my sidearm and start firing, but I can only keep them about five feet away from the hovercar. Dammit!

            It’s a risky move, yet I’m running out of safe options at this point. With one arm, I scoop Rick up from under his blanket, and I fire a portal into the hovercar floor. I jump down into it, dragging Rick with me amidst shouts and orders to halt. _Someplace safe,_ I beg, _someplace safe._

            We land with a crash on a cold tile floor. For a second, I panic, thinking we somehow hadn’t left the vault. But then I look up and see lines of gleaming white Federation ships—it’s the hangar! If I could just drag him to the elevator and get down to the guest parking where my ship is, we could possibly be home-free. It’s a monumental effort, but I haul Rick across the floor for what seems like miles until we reach the other side of the hangar. I slap my hand on the biometric scanner, praying the Federation was so caught up in its own bureaucracy that I hadn’t been removed from their database.

            “ _Access denied_ ,” the scanner says coolly.

            “What?!” I yell.

            “ _Federation biometric database is currently offline._ ”

            “What the hell—”

            “ _Emergency lockdown protocol has been initiated. All electric-based modes of transport, including elevators and vault hovercars, have been disabled for your safety._ ”

            “ARGH!” I punch the scanner in vain—I know the elevator doors won’t open for me. I roll my eyes and drag Rick by his collar over to the door for the stairs, push it open, and head on down. As the door shuts behind me, I hear that same annoying scanner voice announce the lockdown over the PA system, as if every bug wasn’t immediately notified that I’d left the max security vault. Sometimes I can’t believe I worked for these idiots.

            I make it down about three flights of stairs before my arm starts to grow numb from holding Rick’s collar, so I switch to dragging him by his ankles like a rickshaw behind me. Ha, _rick_ shaw. I can’t promise that I don’t let his head dribble against the steps a few times like a basketball as we go down. Cruel, but he really deserves a lot more than a few dents in his skull if you ask me. Eventually I feel sorry for him and take his collar again. I’d carry him like a princess bride if he wasn’t so goddamn heavy.

            We make it to the guest parking ramp some time later, and I question whether I’ll ever have feeling in my left arm again. Blessedly, my ship is parked close to the stairs. I click the DOOR OPEN button on my key fob and heft Rick up inside, pulling myself up after. Just like before, I cover him up with some rags and blankets before I settle in to start the ship. And just like before, those bugs come flying up out of nowhere.

            “You know, it’s really amazing you didn’t think to tow this thing as soon as you knew I was here!” I sass through the windshield. I know damn well they can’t hear me; Gromflomites have atrocious hearing. They flock to and pound on every bit of glass they can reach, sounding like an intense sudden downpour of rain. Lasers ricochet off the metal sides of the ship—how stupid _are_ these bugs? The Federation issued me this ship six years ago for my job and let me keep it as a parting gift. Did they really think it wouldn’t be bullet- and laser-proof?

            “You’re also forgetting one thing!” I say as I pull out of the parking space and flip on my windshield wipers, squishing and smearing several Gromflomites in the process. “This thing has a cloaking device that even your finest radars can’t detect. So catch me if you can, because you sure as hell won’t find me!”

            I press the cloaking button and feel the whole ship shudder as it always does. Newer models don’t have that same feedback issue when the device activates, I guess. Less disturbance in the fabric of space-time or something. I zoom toward the lowering garage door and aim the portal gun through the windshield, praying that Gromflomite blood doesn’t somehow mess up the refraction of the gun beam and make it rebound. A swirling lime-green portal blossoms in front of my eyes, thank _Dios_ , and I fly right through it.

            We pop out in deep space. A quick glance at my rear-view monitor tells me we’re well away from the Federation prison, but I have no clue where we are right now. Just as well, I suppose. It’d be better if we laid low for a while before I tried to move us anywhere prominent.

            “ _Estás libre_ , Rick,” I say as I turn the auto-pilot on and walk back to the makeshift kitchen, nudging him with my boot. Still out like a light. I grab an apple off the counter—Earth food has become much easier to come by now that they’re a colony-project—and click the radio on, tuning it until I find the right frequency. It doesn’t take long to find it, because by now every major news outlet has got wind of what happened.

            “ _Attention, Federation denizens,_ ” the reporter crackles through the speakers. “ _The Federation’s most valuable prisoner, terrorist and career criminal Rick Sanchez, has been broken out of maximum security by an unidentified suspect. This suspect killed five and seriously injured at least two dozen prison guards in their attempt to free Sanchez, making them armed and dangerous. Whereabouts of Sanchez and the suspect are unknown at this time. Should you have any information about the suspect’s identity or their whereabouts with Sanchez, please contact the Ministry of Law Enforcement immediately through your local office._

“ _Again, we repeat: Rick Sanchez is broken out of Federation custody and currently at large._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting a little hairy, broh.


	2. Looks Good on Paper

**Summer**

Things are really weird without Grandpa Rick here. I mean, things were weird when he was here, too, but this is different.

            For one thing, Dad has a job again. A little robot wheeled up to him right after we got back to Earth six months ago, gave him antidepressants, and told him the Ministry of Employment would “assign him a function.” Now he works for a Federation-funded ad agency, trying to figure out how to market Earth products to other planets. That’s pretty easy, as it turns out; every alien in our area of the galaxy wants to try the strange things usually seen on late-night TV infomercials. He doesn’t sit at breakfast popping balloons on his tablet anymore or ask me nagging questions. Dad actually seems happy now, happier than when Grandpa first showed up on our doorstep.

            It’s Mom who’s unhappy, though she does her best to hide it. She’s never really talked about her childhood with Grandpa Rick, but I guess he wasn’t around much. What’s one more episode of abandonment as an adult, right? Yet I catch her sighing while she loads the dishwasher or ties her hair up in a bun for the night shift at the new 24/7 Federation veterinarian clinic (head of vet surgery now—totes exciting!). I know she misses him, but she doesn’t say anything to keep Dad quiet. I wish she’d express her feelings a bit more, though.

            “It’s okay to cry, Mom,” I told her one day when I came home from school and caught her looking at an old family photo where she drew Rick in.

            “I know, sweetie,” she said, setting the photo aside and walking into the kitchen. “But tears aren’t going to bring him back. Go check on Morty, okay?”

            Ugh, that’s another weird thing about my life right now. Apparently, I’m my little brother’s keeper. If I don’t go down into the basement and extract him at least five times a day, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t even eat. He barely does, anyway—he picks at every plate Mom fixes for him while she watches with the most fragile smile on her face. I don’t even know what he does down there half the time, and honestly I don’t want to. Morty wants to pretend everything’s okay, that he can handle Grandpa Rick being gone, and that’s the biggest lie I’ve heard in my life. He’s the one that took it the worst when we got the news.

            The first thing Dad did once we made it back home was flip on the TV, of course. Grandpa’s intergalactic cable box was still switched on, so we landed on some news channel with Gromflomites on for the anchors.

            “In a stunning turn of events, Rick Sanchez, the Galactic Federation’s most wanted career criminal, has recently been captured at the Plimplom Tavern just outside the Gloppydrop System,” one of the anchors reported.

            “Yes, Michael,” the other anchor said. “According to a tip to the Federation hotline, Sanchez had kidnapped his own family members and left them on Dwarf Terrace 9, a planet outside federal jurisdiction. His family has since been safely returned to Earth, where they now have full immunity from Federation investigation.”

            “We have immunity?” Dad had said, but Mom shushed him. A rep from the Federation would come by later in the week and explain that, yes, we pretty much were untouchable. No one could harass us about where Grandpa had been—no car battery to the nipples. We had free movement about Earth, and to my knowledge, anywhere else we were approved to go for travel.

            I’m still not convinced the Feds aren’t monitoring us, though.

Morty’s eyes were glazed over while watching the news report, his fingers digging into the back of the couch. He looked like he was about ready to faint.

            “In the meantime, Sanchez has been locked in the maximum security vault at an undisclosed Federation prison with little chance of parole or release,” the first reporter said.

            Morty _did_ actually faint just then, dropping to the carpet like a dead fish. The TV, and Grandpa, were temporarily forgotten.

            But it was only temporary, because right now Mom just walked by the couch in her green scrubs and tapped me on the shoulder, which has become her little ‘go-check-on-Morty’ signal. I roll my eyes and shove my phone in my pocket, abandoning my blog update for now.

            Yes, I have a blog. The Federation seems to think people under the age of 18 should be focused on their schoolwork, not trying to make money, so the Ministry of Youth came up with a bunch of “alternative” jobs that they thought would fit in better with a teen’s rigorous lifestyle. At least that’s what they said in the brochure. Running a blog seemed like the most effortless job they had, and it actually gave me an excuse to be on my phone all the time. All I have to do is have a little banner ad at the top of my blog page and occasionally post some positive stuff about what the Federation is doing for us young galactic citizens, and I get $500 a week. Grandpa would say I’m selling out, but he’s not around to say anything now, is he?

            I clomp down the basement stairs in the dark, stopping a few steps from the bottom. “Morty! Mom wants you to come upstairs!”

            No response.

Crap. Please tell me he didn’t fall asleep down there—I _really_ don’t want to go down to the basement, it’s creepy.

            “Morty!” I yell again. “Mom’s gonna leave for work soon! She wants to say goodbye to your gross pimply face!”

            “T-tell her I’m n-not interested!” he yells back.

            Mom materializes at the top of the stairs, still fussing with her hair. “Can you at least come to the bottom, sweetie?”

            I hear an audible sigh, the squeak of an old office chair being rolled back, and shuffling sneakers on concrete. Morty appears out of the darkness, rubbing a bloodshot eye with the heel of his palm. I wasn’t joking about his pimply face, either. Puberty has hit him like a freight train these past six months. He’s shot up a couple inches—all his T-shirts looked like crop tops for two weeks until Mom got him new ones—and even has the faintest caterpillar mustache on his upper lip. He’s still not taller than me, though, something I point out to him almost every chance I get.

            “Yeah, Mom?” Morty manages to say without squeaking. Oh yeah, the voice cracks have been _hilarious_ , too.

            “Just wanted to say goodbye before I left for work tonight. Casserole’s in the fridge for dinner—tuna hot dish. You can heat it up once your father gets home.”

            “’Kay,” he grunts before turning back to the dark basement. “G’night.”

            “Bye, Mom!” I wave up the stairs to her. Mom waves back and turns back into the kitchen. I wait to hear the door into the garage shut and lock before I focus back on Morty.

            “She’s only trying to be nice,” I say, taking another step down. “You should try returning the favor sometime.”

            “I don’t n-need your l-hick!-lectures, Summer!” my not-so-little brother replies, his voice cracking. He winces; I can see his silhouette rubbing his throat. “Damn, that hurts.”

            “Want me to get you some water?”

            “I’m fine.”

            I take another step down, then hop down onto the basement floor. Morty is crouched over an old banquet table we used for birthday parties, a desk lamp concentrated in front of him. I can’t see what he’s doing from this angle, but I can hear the faint fizzle of electrical sparks. Quietly, I walk up behind him to get a better look.

            Tiny gears and metal plates are scattered in front of his workspace, along with several pliers and clamps. Morty has some kind of mini welding tool in his hand, buzzing along a cluster of wires connected to a circuit board. Unlike Grandpa Rick, he’s wearing safety goggles, which is why it takes him a second to see me before he yelps and drops the tool.

            “J-Jesus, Summer! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

            “I just wanna see what you’ve been doing.”

            “Don’t you have a blog to update or something?”

            “How do you know about my blog?”

            “Because you won’t shut the hell up about it at dinner.”

            “Right,” I say, annoyed. “Name the last time you had dinner with me and Mom and Dad.”

            Morty has nothing to say to that and turns back to the project in front of him. He slides a few plates into place, brushes the leftover parts and tools into a box, and sets the mini welder aside.

            “Here,” he says, picking up his project. “This is what I’ve been working on.”

            “Is that…the butter robot?”

            “It doesn’t just pass butter anymore.” Morty flicks a switch, and the robot springs to life. It wheedles over to an old coffee can, pulls out a yellow stub of a pencil, and wheedles back to Morty, who’s pulled out a memo pad with blank pages. The robot starts drawing on the page and soon ends up with a crude doodle of a star, a house, and a flower.

            “Morty, that’s amazing!” I gasp. “You really taught it to do all that?”

            “Heh-heh. Well, not really.” Morty rubs the back of his neck nervously. “Rick already installed it with a pretty basic learning AI, but he kinda made the robot functionally stupid. Like, it was smart enough to ask existential questions, but not smart enough to anything other than pass butter, y’know? So I just figured out how to override that stupidity a little bit with a different circuit board and connections.”

            “That’s _so_ cool.”

            “I know.” The faintest smile crosses Morty’s face, but it vanishes as soon as it appears. “It only took me three months to figure out how. Rick could probably do it in five minutes.”

            “Morty, are you really gonna compare yourself to a genius who’s like 50 years older than you?”

            “Y-yes!” he stammers. “Because Rick wanted me to rise above a-a-and focus on science. B-b-but how can I focus on science when it takes me forever to do one thing?”

            “The one thing you did is great, though,” I say, recording a video of the robot drawing a basic cat on my phone. “You’re not as fast as Grandpa, no, but you’re learning. That’s the important part.”

            “Yeah, I guess.” Morty leans on his hand and watches the robot turn to a clean page on the memo pad. He lets it draw a few more doodles before switching it off and setting it off to the side, then pulls one of Grandpa’s lab coats around his shoulders. Morty’s become, like, irrationally attached to those things. Mom tried to go through Grandpa’s room for laundry about a month after we got back, but Morty had already ransacked the closet for the lab coats and refused to let Mom touch any of them. I’d make fun of him for having a security blanket when he’s 15 years old, but I won’t. If he wants to have something to remind him of Grandpa, then so be it.

            “I really miss him,” he whispers after a few long minutes of silence. Tears plop down on the banquet table, and I pretend not to notice. “I’m just trying to do what he said, f-f-focus on science and stuff, but it doesn’t work. I’m still hurting…”

            I’m at a loss for words. I mean, I miss Grandpa Rick, too, even if he _did_ ignore me like 90% of the time. We’d had our own great adventures together. Nothing like he and Morty ever shared, but still some adventures. It’s pretty clear to me now that Morty really thought of Rick as his best friend; he really has no friends that I know about at school. We’ve grown closer since Rick left, but it’s hard to make up lost time when you’ve antagonized each other for years.

            I put my hand on Morty’s shoulder. For once, he doesn’t flinch at the contact.

            “What can I do for you?” I say.

            “C-can you bring Rick back?”

            “Well, no.”

            “Then you can’t do anything, Summer. I’m sorry, but I’m really not gonna feel b-better until that point.”

            I suck air in through my teeth. “Morty…”

            “I’m not saying he’s gonna get, like, parole or anything like that. Those stupid bugs got ‘im right where they want ‘im. The F-Federation has been on his ass for y-years, you know?”

            “Yeah…” I trail off. “Where are you going with this?”

            Something like a smile crosses Morty’s face. He ducks under the table for a second and pulls out a beat-up three-subject notebook labeled Algebra II, the binding halfway uncurled. When he flips it open, I see pages and pages filled with his cramped handwriting. Seriously, how do any of his teachers read his homework?

            “I, uh,” he starts, “I’ve been planning this for a long time, Summer. I can totally understand if you don’t wanna come with, ‘cause it’ll be kind of dangerous—”

            “Can I have some context, please?”

            “This is a plan to break Rick out of prison, all right?” Morty blurts.

            I stare at my little brother, mouth agape. He _cannot_ be serious.

            “Look, I-I’ve thought everything out.” He starts flipping through pages, showing me rough sketches in pen of what look like building schematics. I never knew he had an artistic side. “Every Federation prison is built roughly the same way no matter what planet it’s on. People go inside abandoned ones and take photos on tours and stuff, and convicts that have gotten out of various locations say it pretty much looks like this. Open-access area with cells for minimum-security, and a vault for the maximum-security offenders.”

            “Where have you been talking to released convicts?”

            “Uh…Reddit?”

            “And you’re gonna take what anonymous aliens on Reddit have to say for granted?” I hold my hand out to check my nails. “Seems pretty sketchy to me.”

            “It’s what I’ve got to go on, okay?” Morty shakes his head. “Anyway, Rick is housed in the Gloppydrop System Penitentiary according to every news report I’ve found. The ones I could find in English, anyway. I guess the Federation didn’t want to move him too far if he tried to escape back to Earth.”

            “Mmhm,” I nod.

            “So, will you help me?”

            I look down at Morty, unsure. I really, really, _really_ want to help him, I do. But I have so many questions about this plan. If we pulled it off, it would be _huge._ Like, we’d be on the evening news on every major broadcasting network across the galaxy, possibly further. Yet we’d also be fugitives, and any “immunity” we might have had before would be blown sky-high. There would be no way we’d ever be able to come back to Earth. And if we failed and got caught…I’d rather not think about that.

            Then it hits me: Morty is willing to play those odds. My little brother, who for pretty much his whole life wanted nothing more than to stay out of the way and get by, wants to risk everything he’s ever known to save someone who _maybe_ actually cares about us. He’s got nothing to lose here, in his mind. All that matters to him is saving Grandpa Rick.

            Maybe he’s not so spineless and wimpy after all.

            “Morty,” I say after a long moment of silence. “I have, like, so many questions about what you’ve written in that notebook. There’s so much uncertainty to all of this…”

            “I know, I know,” he replies. “I know what might happen if we get caught, kinda. I-it-it’d be worse than a car battery to the nipples, I know that much. But if we don’t break him out, who will? I-I mean, how do we know the Federation didn’t just make up all the stuff Rick did to frame him for someone else’s crimes, huh?”

            _How do we know they didn’t?_ I think to myself.

            “Look, Rick isn’t a nice guy,” Morty continues. “I know that from experience. But I…I have to give him the benefit of the doubt, you know? I’m not here to judge him for any bad shit he’s done. I’m just here to be his helper. Before he came here, I was nothing.”

            “No—”

            “Don’t say no! You know it’s true! I was a loser!” he bursts out. “With Rick…I mean, yeah, I’m still a loser, but I felt like I could be something. So that’s why I gotta get him out, Summer. I want…I want to feel like something again.”

            He gets up and slaps the notebook shut. “I’m not expecting you to come with me. I-I can handle it on my own. Just do me a favor and don’t rat me out to Mom and Dad. Please?”

            With that, he pushes past me and marches up the stairs, leaving me to stand in the dark. My mind is swirling, torn between two desires. I’m almost 18—most people would say I have my whole life ahead of me. Do I really want to abandon everything I’ve got, everything I’ve ever known, just to follow a plan that looks good on paper?

            Maybe I need to follow Grandpa Rick’s motto. Maybe I need to not give a fuck.

            Which is why, after a lukewarm dinner of tuna hot dish and three hours of Dad chuckling at random cable sitcoms, I shuffle upstairs pretending to be exhausted. I wait until I hear Dad’s bedroom door click shut, then I tiptoe down the hall to Morty’s room. My fist only taps the door once before he flings it open, eyebrows furrowed.

            “Summer?” he asks. “What are you—”

            “If you ask any more questions, I swear to God I’ll change my mind,” I cut across his voice. “Just tell me one thing: what do I need to pack?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wonder when they'll get the news Rick isn't in prison anymore?


	3. Ground Control to Major Morty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty and Summer put their plan into action, blast into space, and have some deep conversation, broh.

**Morty**

             I totally thought Summer was gonna rat me out. That’d be just like her, my bitch of a sister. She’d run right to Dad’s room and tell him everything, and he’d keep me in here until Mom got back so _she_ could be the one to give me the we’re-worried-about-you speech instead of him. Then I’d be put on watch to make sure I wasn’t gonna kill myself or w-whatever, like they did the first week we got back.

            None of that happened. Instead, Summer pounded on my door a little after midnight, asking what she had to pack. That was a hell of a surprise. I handed her the notebook, wincing as she whipped through the pages for the supply list.

            “Can’t believe you wrote all this out. Like, by hand and everything,” she muttered.

            “Computers can be hacked, Summer. I’m not a dumbass.”

            “Didn’t say you were. God, so defensive.”

            She came back about 15 minutes later in all black clothes with all the stuff I’d written down, which wasn’t much. I thought the TSA was strict about bringing shit on an airplane, but the Federation is much worse. Even something as innocent as a bottle of water could spread disease on another planet, apparently, so I’d spent hours combing through the allowed items list and doing the math on the maximum amount of everything we could bring. I had no idea what we’d do if we couldn’t find water on another planet. We’d probably be screwed.

            Summer is rummaging through every pocket on her backpack now, emptying things into my wastebasket. There’s a small _thunk_ as something plastic hits the bottom of the basket, and she bends down to pick it up.

            “What is it?” I ask.

            She turns the thing over in her hands, frowning. It looks like a hot pink keychain to me, like one of those fancy ones that starts newer cars when you stick it in your pocket and push a button on the dashboard.

            “It _looks_ familiar,” she says, “but I don’t know why.”

            “Push the button.”

            “What?”

            “That big silver button on there.” I nod at the keychain. “I-I-I dunno. Push it and see what happens.”

            “Didn’t Grandpa Rick teach you not to mess with stuff if you don’t know what it does?”

            I cross my arms and glare at her. “Really, Summer? Y-y-you think Rick knows what he’s doing every time he goes on an adventure? You think h-he’s got a clue about everything in the universe? It’s a pretty big universe, y’know. Most of the time Rick just d-doesn’t give a fuck and does what he wants, deals with the consequences later. So just push the goddamn button!”

            “ _Fine_ ,” Summer huffs and pushes the button. There’s a huge rumble outside, like the earth is about to burst open, and we both lose our balance and tumble to the bedroom floor. The rumbling doesn’t stop for a good thirty seconds or more, shaking the whole house. I hear a few knick-knacks tumble off the hall shelves and smash; my bedroom door rattles in its jamb. Finally everything is still again. Summer crawls over to the window and gasps.

            “Oh. My. God. _Morty_. You gotta see this.”

            Shakily, I get back to my feet and look out into the backyard—well, what’s left of the backyard, anyway. It’s pretty much a dirt pit, with a pristine pink-and-white spaceship sitting in the center of all the destruction. Mom’s flower beds are nothing more than a pile of split timbers and wilted pansies now. Oh, crap, she’s gonna be so pissed when she gets home.

            “W-w-w-what the hell is that?” I practically yell. Not like there’s much point in being quiet anymore; if that mini-earthquake didn’t wake Dad up, nothing will.

            “I think it’s mine!” Summer yells, halfway down the stairs already.

            “WHAT?!”

            “I SAID I THINK IT’S MINE!”

            What the fuck is she talking about? I sling my backpack on my back, grab the notebook in one hand, and take the stairs three at a time to catch up with my crazy sister. How does _she_ have a spaceship and not me? Did Rick build it for her?

            I stand at the edge of the pit with Summer, staring at the ship gleaming in the moonlight. She’s chewing on her thumbnail, something she only does when she’s talking on the phone with a boy she likes or is worrying about a test she took. The pink keychain is still dangling from her other hand.

            “How—the _hell_ —” I pant, “did you get a spaceship? And why?”

            “Long story,” she blurts.

            “Well you’d better think of a way to shorten it up, because I-I-I wanna know some answers! And I’m pissed!” The notebook’s pages crinkle in my fist. “Do you know how long it took me to plan this trip? How long it took me to figure out the intergalactic and interdimensional transit system? You had _that_ ,” I wave at the ship, “this whole time and didn’t tell me about it?! Do you know how much time I could have saved?”

            “Okay, first of all, there was no guarantee I was gonna even help you with your plan!” Summer says, glaring at me. “So what were you gonna do: steal my spaceship you didn’t even know existed until now?”

            “I, uh…uh…”

            “And second, I kinda forgot it existed too, okay?”

            “ _How do you forget you had a spaceship?!_ ” I screech.

            A light flicks on in the hallway, and I hear Dad’s voice float out into the night air, “Morty? Summer? What are you doing outside?”

            “Oh crap. _Dad!_ ” we both breathe, agreeing on something for once.

            “Get in the ship!” Summer panics. She clicks the button on her keychain again, and a set of white stairs slides down to the ground and the glass roof opens. I jump in the pit and scramble up the steps, Summer not far behind. Once we’re inside, the roof whooshes down over us and a quiet female voice perks up from the dashboard.

            “ _Good evening, Summer. Good evening, Summer’s Slave._ ”

            “Slave?!” I exclaim.

            “ _Would you like me to set a destination for your journey?_ ”

            “Just fly!” Summer yells. “Please! We can talk about this later! And Morty isn’t my slave.”

            “ _Thank you for saying ‘please,’ Summer. Remember, I’m here if you need to talk._ ”

            The ship lifts off the ground just as Dad stumbles out the back door in his striped pajamas, rubbing his eyes in bewilderment. I almost feel sorry for him, but then I turn forward and see the multitudes of stars rushing toward us. Rick is somewhere out in these stars, waiting. Excitement explodes in the pit of my stomach as I realize we’re doing this. Summer and I are actually doing this. We’re gonna go on a crazy adventure of a lifetime, just the two of us, and save Rick from prison.

            “Hey, uh,” I start as the ship shudders through the stratosphere. “S-sorry about all the yelling and freaking out down there.”

            Summer waves a hand. “It’s whatever. We were both stressed and wanted to get out of there. Let’s call it even.”

            “O-okay.” I’m not convinced she won’t somehow use this against me later, but I push the thought out of my mind. We’re trapped in a metal box together thousands of miles above Earth—this really isn’t the place to be at each other’s throats.

            It’s quiet for a long time as the ship finally breaks free of the atmosphere and blasts into space proper. The only noises are the thrusters powering down to a lower hum and some tinkling piano-like music that I assume the ship’s voice turned on to soothe us. My head sways gently to the rhythm. My eyelids flutter—when was the last time I’d gotten a solid night’s sleep?

            “ _Would you like a blanket, Morty?_ ” the ship asks me.

            “Uh, sure. I guess,” I reply. A pair of robotic arms slips a fuzzy fleece blanket over my body, and the seat starts vibrating below my upper back in a massage setting. This is the most relaxed I’ve felt in months, the most relaxed I’ve felt since, well, since Rick disappeared.

            “Hey, Summer,” I say after the massage shifts to my lower back. “Why does the ship keep calling me your slave? And how does it know who you are?”

            She’s tapping away on her phone like usual, playing some kind of bubble-popping game. When I ask the questions, she puts the phone down in her lap, thinking.

            “Well…you remember when you had Morty Jr., and Grandpa and I went to Gazorpazorp to see if we could find him better parents?”

            “Vaguely,” I reply. I’d been a little preoccupied with suddenly being a dad at the time.

            “On Gazorpazorp, the women are the ones in charge, and they gave me this ship as a gift. I guess I never knew what Grandpa did with it after we got home. Obviously he parked it in his underground lair or whatever.”

            “Weird. And the slave thing?”

            “Don’t take it personally. The Gazorpian women thought Grandpa Rick was my slave too when we first got there.”

            I can’t help but laugh. “Oh yeah? How did he take that?”

            “Not well. I think he farted at them.”

            We both start giggling at the thought and eventually trail off, staring out the windshield and roof at the stars. That’s the weird thing about space travel: you can never tell if you’ve been by the same group of stars already or not, because they all look the same. All the same to me, at least. Rick probably knew his way around the galaxy like the back of his own hand. Or the bottom of his flask.

            “D’you ever think about the fact that you have a _son_?” Summer says after a long while. “Like, Mom and Dad were teen parents, but you beat them by like three years!”

            “Hey, I didn’t know that was gonna happen!” I say, defensive. “I thought Gwendolyn was, y’know, a regular old sex robot. I-I-If I’d known I was gonna be a dad, I wouldn’t have even looked at her twice.”

            “Riiiight.”

            “He’s probably dead by now anyways. Y’know, with how fast he grew up and all.”

            “God, Morty, such a downer!”

            “I’m just tryin’ to be realistic! Life g-goes by in a blink of an eye, and there’s not much you can do about it except live. Take it as it comes.”

            Summer swings her seat toward me, legs crossed. Against the white leather, she kinda looks the villain in those spy movies Dad likes to watch on Saturday afternoon marathons. But her face is full of frown lines and concern. She looks a lot like Mom right now, and it kinda freaks me out.

            “When did you get to be so, I dunno, detached about things?”

            “Huh?”

            “Grandpa Rick talks the same way you do about life and all that junk. What’s it called?” Summer twirls her hand, looking for an answer. “Nihilist, I think?”

            “Summer, I’ve literally buried myself, broken all the bones in my legs, watched Earth get taken over by disease, seen a planet go absolutely insane during a purge, and all sorts of other absolutely insane crap. I-I-I’ve been assaulted, almost raped!” Summer claps her hand to her mouth in shock, but I keep going. I swallow back the bile and bitter memories rising to my throat, memories of alien blood and brushes with death. I have to keep going. “So eventually, I had to learn not to give a fuck. I-If Rick has taught me anything, it’s that you can’t let things get to you. Y-y-you gotta let it roll off your back.”

            “Morty…you can’t just _not_ care about things. I know you’re fifteen now and you think not caring is cool because Grandpa Rick does it, but believe me when I say he’s miserable. Remember when you wouldn’t believe me about Tiny Rick?”

            I have a sudden flashback to Birdperson, charging the portal gun and telling me what “Wubba-lubba-dub-dub” actually meant. _I am in great pain. Please help me._

            “Well yeah,” I respond, “but—”

            “But nothing,” Summer snaps. “He’s a miserable old man. He cares so much it makes him sick, and you’re too naïve to see that. He cared enough to have Mom.”

            “He didn’t care enough to stay.”

            Summer stutters like I do when I’ve lost my words and swivels to stare out the windshield again. We must be on the outskirts of an asteroid belt: chunks of rock and space debris float by, or are we floating by it? My eyelids flutter as the massage chair pushes up to my neck and applies rolling pressure—God, it feels good. Almost makes me forget the conversation, until…

            “He cared enough to have a wife,” Summer says after several minutes or an hour. “Grandpa Rick got _married._ Now that’s a weird thought.” She turns her head back over to me. “Has he said anything to you about her? Mom has never really said—”

            “She was a hell of a woman.”

            “What?”

            “That’s what Rick told me one night,” I shrug. “We were out driving through space, I asked about Grandma, he said ‘You mean Joyce? She’s alive, wrinkled, and stuffed-shirt-y like your typical old lady. You know that.’ And I said ‘No, I mean my other grandma. Your wife, y’know. Er, ex-wife.’ He went quiet for a real long time.”

            “And he said—?”

            “All he said after like fifteen minutes was ‘She was a hell of a woman.’ Then Rick dropped the subject, and I didn’t say anything else.”

            “D’you think she died?”

            I rub my shoulder, thinking. The massage chair takes that as a cue to move, and my fingertips start vibrating with quick electronic pulses. “I-I-I don’t think so. Mom would’ve said something, would’ve told us when we were younger. It just kinda seems like she’s gone.”

            “Gone.” Summer hums over the word, eyebrows furrowed. “Makes you wonder, though. What kind of woman would marry Grandpa?”

            I let the question hang. We could go around in circles with this until we got to the prison and still be no closer to the answer. Instead, I let my eyes drift almost closed and watch the stars pass by through slits. The robotic hands come around some time later and offer me protein pills—we didn’t think to bring any food with us because I didn’t know how that’d work out in space, so they must be emergency rations. The pills are chalky, like those chewable tablets Dad takes when his stomach is upset, but they taste just enough like a hamburger that I don’t spit them out. I nuzzle under the blanket and curl up, drifting off to sleep in the cradle of space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always wondered what happened to Summer's ship from the Gazorpians, so it makes a comeback here! Morty's pissed that he spent half of a five-subject notebook planning their way through customs, though it's nice to travel in comfort. 
> 
> The "she's a hell of a woman" bit near the end is a reference to my first R&M work, "Goodbye Stranger." It's not required reading to know what's going on, not yet anyway. 
> 
> Chapter title and the protein pill part inspired by "Space Oddity" by David Bowie.


	4. Splitting is Only Good if You're a Banana

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things truly go ham in this one, broh.

**Summer**

            _“You have slept an estimated ten and three-quarters hours according to Earth’s rotational velocity. Would you like to be woken, Summer?”_

“Nnnnuh, five more minutes, Mom. God.”

            “ _I am not your biological nor adoptive mother, Summer, but you may call me that if you wish.”_

            I jolt completely awake, sit up, and look outside. We’re drifting past a planet that looks like a greener Jupiter, only with about ten big hurricanes swirling across the surface instead of one. Are we even in the Milky Way anymore? On Earth I’m pretty decent with directions, but in space I’m completely lost. Do they still use north and south out here?

            “Uh, ship? Can you give me any idea where we are?” I ask, pulling my hair tie out and combing out my hair with my fingers. What I wouldn’t give for a good shower right now, _and_ I had to leave my good conditioner at home.

            “ _We are currently 0.018 light-years from the surface of planet D-65-Phi, in the eighth sector of the Cryomancer Galaxy. You did not set destination coordinates when we disembarked, so I have taken it upon myself to give you a scenic tour of space. I thought a long drive might ease the considerable psychological and emotional stress you and your companion were under when you first entered.”_

“Wow. That’s…really sweet of you, ship. Thank you.” Leave it to an alien spaceship to be more considerate of our emotions than our own parents.

            “ _You are most welcome, Summer. Remember, I’m here if you need to talk._ ”

            Scenic tour or not, we still needed to get to Grandpa. Time was of the essence, if we could even tell what time is out here. Morty had to have written the prison’s coordinates somewhere in the notebook that was now laying in a heap on the floor. I quietly slip out of my seat and walk around Morty’s chair just as he curls up tighter in a ball while he sleeps. The blanket slips off one of his shoulders, so I tug it back up on the way back to my seat. I’ll let him sleep for now.

            It looks like he actually took the time to split the notebook up into little sections with tiny color-coded Post-Its. Has he always been this organized? I pick the section that says _Cheat Sheets_ and flip open to it. The first page is covered with ink splatters and crossed-out words, but a long string of numbers and symbols toward the bottom looks enough like a set of coordinates. I’m about to tell the ship to call up a keyboard so I can type them in, until I notice just how many things are crossed out on the page. Morty sometimes misspelled the same word three or four times before he gets it right, and even then I see little question marks scattered throughout the margins that express his confusion.

            Wait, is Morty dyslexic? I always thought Dad was just being a dick when he said Morty had a learning disability—I never thought he was serious. I suddenly feel awful for randomly pulling the spaceship out from nowhere, because it clearly took my little brother countless hours just to understand the information necessary to compile this fat notebook, let alone write everything down. His drawings are amazing, though. What I saw as rough sketches before were actually very detailed building schematics in blue pen, with little inset drawings of air ducts and door locks. It makes me wonder if he has some sketchbook tucked away at home somewhere that we’ve never seen.

            “Ship, keyboard, please,” I say. A holographic keyboard springs to life in front of me. The number of letters and symbols blows my mind: most of them are familiar to me, like the Latin alphabet and some of the Greek letters, but beyond that it’s alien. I triple-check every time I henpeck a key to make sure it’s right, and even then I’m not sure. Reading the coordinates out loud does nothing to help.

            “Two-point-five-nine-omega…wait, is that epsilon? No, it’s omega…omega-comma-negative-three-seven-nine-point-theta…”

            I finally hit the Enter key and blow out a big breath. Way too stressful.

            “ _These are prohibited coordinates_ ,” the ship after a long string of beeps.

            “Say what now?”

            “ _I am prohibited from delivering you to these exact coordinates, as they target restricted airspace._ ”

            “Oh my God. Hang on a second.” I swing around and nudge Morty awake with my foot.

            “Mmmm…nah, Jessica, your feet are so soft. L-l-lemme touch ‘em, just once…” he mumbles, flexing his fingers out to grab my toes.

            “GROSS! Morty, wake _up_!” I yell.

            “G-whuh?!” Morty jerks awake and looks down the length of my leg to a very pissed-off me, sitting with her arms crossed. “Y-y-you’re not Jessica!”

            “Thank God for that. At least I know what your fetish is now.”

            “Shut up!”

            “No. How about _you_ sit up and tell me what’s wrong with these coordinates?”

            “What do you mean, w-what’s wrong with them?”

            “I mean that apparently the ship can’t take us to the prison because it’d take us into restricted airspace!”

            Morty’s eyes fly wide open. He snatches the notebook from me and scans the string of stuff he’d written down, then stares at the flashing green monitor where all the numbers and symbols I typed were blinking.

            “They’re all right,” he mutters to himself. “They’re all _right_ , I spent ages memorizing them and putting them in the right order. I-I-I checked them like a million times. Why won’t they work?”

            “Ship,” I ask the empty air around us. “Why can’t you take us to the prison? We just want to visit our grandpa. He’s, um,” I bite my lip trying to think of a decent white lie, “he’s gotten very sick, and we need to see him.”

            “ _I know that’s a falsehood, Summer. My parasympathetic monitoring systems indicate a significant increase in your body temperature and sweat production just now, meaning that you’re trying to lie._ ”

            “Dammit.”

            “ _I cannot fly into restricted airspace. The consequences for this could potentially harm you and your companion, conflicting with Protocol One of keeping you safe._ ”

            “The last ship that was supposed to keep me safe killed several lifeforms to do that, so I’m not really buying your Protocol One excuse.”

            “Look, Siri?” Morty pipes up. “C-can I call you Siri?”

            “ _You may not._ ”

            “Yeah, well, I-I’m gonna do it anyway. Siri, I don’t think you fully understand—”

            “ _My CPU and hard drive were outfitted by the finest technological experts Gazorpian society has to offer. Your Earth supercomputers barely hold a candle to the vast amount of information and processing power I was born into. There are few very things I don’t understand._ ”

            “Siri, this is a suicide mission. Either we come back with Rick, or we don’t come back at all!”

            “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I interject, holding up my palms. “I never agreed to a suicide mission!”

            Morty glares at me. “Summer, look at this notebook. D-did you see any pages on how to get back home? That’s because I didn’t plan on it. I-I was kinda banking on Rick having some ideas once we bust him out, but there’s no guarantee we’ll get that far. I thought you knew what you were g-getting into!”

            “Well, I didn’t!”

            “Well, you should have!”

            We glower at each other for a minute until the ship interrupts. “ _If I may try to diffuse some of this tension—_ ”

            “The only way you’re going to make anything better is if you take us to the Gloppydrop System Penitentiary, a-a-and you get us there now,” Morty snaps at the ceiling. The intense look in his eyes is freaking me out—it’s how Grandpa looked when he was trying to bail us out of Birdperson’s wedding. “I don’t care what you gotta do, if you gotta put us into hyperdrive or engage the flux capacitor o-or whatever—”

            “ _Despite your uncanny resemblance to Marty McFly from the Earth film trilogy ‘Back to the Future,’ you have a very limited understanding of how space travel works. It is not in any way equivalent to time travel._ ”

            “S-still,” Morty stutters. “You gotta get us there.”

            “ _Or?_ ”

            The question hangs. Morty clenches and unclenches his fists, an anger management technique I’ve seen Mom use when Dad is acting extraordinarily egotistical or idiotic. I don’t think it’s working, though, because there’s a vein in his temple that looks dangerously close to bursting. So I decide to be the more rational of the two of us.

            “Ship,” I begin cautiously. “This is a very important mission for us. If _we’re_ the ones who choose to violate Protocol One for ourselves, the Federation can’t hold you responsible for overriding that, can they?”

            “ _Well, ah…it’s not that simple…_ ”

            “Actually, I do think it’s that simple. You just don’t want to because you have an attitude problem.” I put my hands on my hips to emphasize my point. Morty gives me his finest WTF face, but I ignore it.

            “ _I was not programmed with an attitude, Summer. Any idiosyncrasies you have identified with my behavior is because of what I’ve learned from my operator._ ”

            “Don’t try and pin this back on me! Besides, you only said you couldn’t take us to those _exact_ coordinates. Why not, I dunno, drift ten feet to the left and drop us off there? That point in space should still be at the prison, right?”

            The ship is quiet for a long time. I’ve got my fingers crossed behind my back, hoping my improvised logic worked. Morty gives me a rather surprised thumbs-up.

            “ _Preliminary calculations would show that adjustment would, in fact, deliver you to your approximate desired location. Is this what you wish to do?_ ”

            “Yes,” I say. “And I want to be there yesterday, so if you could…”

            “ _Engaging hyperdrive system now. All auxiliary systems will revert to standby mode and divert power in ten, nine, eight…_ ”

            “We better strap in, Morty.” I reach down for the seatbelt and draw it across my body. “Dunno how hard this thing will blast off.”

            “Right, right,” he replies, looking for his own seatbelt. He just gets it clicked into place when the hyperdrive reaches a high-pitched whine, then surges us through space.

 

**Morty**

            “So what’s the plan once we get inside?” Summer asks as we hurtle past a massive asteroid field.

            “Well, uh, it’s nothing fancy,” I say, scratching the back of my neck. “I’ve got this all laid out in the notebook, of course, but we’re gonna go in through one of the personnel entrances ‘cause they have less security, then head for the front desk.”

            “The front desk?” She crinkles her nose. “Why?”

            “The max security vault is huge. They keep the prisoners strapped to hexa-he—it looks like a honeycomb.”

            “Hexagons?”

            “Yeah. Most of the honeycomb’s security features are classified, y’know? But I’m gonna guess they keep you strapped down on your wrists and ankles, and maybe like a shock collar or something? Y’know, like what you put on a dog?”

            “Ugh, that’s barbaric,” Summer groans.

            “Anyway, we gotta head to the front desk and pretend we’re new security recruits who were assigned to a new sector, m’kay? Hopefully, they’ll give us a key card without any trouble. If not,” I reach down into my backpack and pull out a tiny phaser handgun, “that’s what this is for.”

            “Holy crap, where did you get a gun?!”

            “Rick gave it to me after we went on this one…adventure I led.” A chill races down my spine at the memory it triggers. “He said since I don’t have a portal gun to bail me out of t-tough spots, I might as well have something that can get rid of the threat.”

            “Oh,” Summer’s face falls. “Was that when…?”

            “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

            “Okay.”

            “ _We are approximately five Earth miles from your destination, Summer. At this time, I find I must ask you whether this is what you want._ ”

            “It _is_ , ship,” Summer grunts, annoyed. “I understand why you keep asking, but you’re making me feel like you don’t trust my decision-making abilities.”

            “ _That was not my intention. I apologize._ ”

            “So weird,” I huff under my breath. Summer shoots me a dirty look, but she smacks me on the arm and points out the windshield.

            “Morty, look. That’s it! That’s gotta be the prison!”

            I look out, and my heart jumps into my throat. The whole complex is surrounded by five layers of force fields that I can see, and probably a few more that I can’t. Guards and Federation ships of all sizes are hovering around the place, especially around the entrances. I wasn’t expecting there would be so many bugs out here, but there they are, wings beating and domed glass helmets covering their heads. They carry long purple spears crackling with electricity at the tips, and hulking guns are strapped to their backs. Why the sudden beef-up in security?

            “Hey, Morty?” Summer has her hand on my shoulder now. “The plan’s still gonna go okay, right?”

            “Y-y-yeah. Everything should be fine. A-okay. I planned for this,” I say, cracking a shaky smile. “Just t-tell the ship to head for the visitor’s entrance, please?”

            “Ship, can you go for the visitor’s entrance instead of wherever I told you to go earlier?”

            “ _Unable to recal—_ krkt!— _calibrate new navigational—_ zzt!— _coordinates. Navigational system offline._ ”

            “What? Ship, what is going on?” Summer panics.

            “ _All non-essential functions off—_ zzzt!— _offline due to external electromagnetic interference. Artificial intelligence system hutting doooooown…_ ”

            “Oh crap, it’s an EM force field!” I cry. “The Federation must have a field that shuts down ship AIs so we can’t, like, ignore their instructions for landing or something!”

            “What are we gonna do?!”

            “Take the wheel! I gotta find the schematics for this place and figure out where the visitor’s—”

            “ _This is Zeta-Nigerion twenty-nine, we’ve identified an unknown aircraft in our airspace. Identify yourself!_ ”

            I smash my fist into the speaker on the dashboard, but I get nothing in return but sore knuckles. I tear the phaser out of its holster and start firing around the cockpit at all the speakers I can see, just to get the voice to shut up. This was not good, this was not good at all…

            “Morty, just because you shot out the speakers doesn’t mean they aren’t asking you the question!” Summer yells at me.

            “Just drive the motherfucking ship! I don’t care where you park it now, just _park it_!” I yell back.

            “Excuse me?!”

            “ _PARK IT_!”

            Summer swings a hard left into the nearest loading bay as the doors are drifting shut like a metallic mouth. There are plenty of open spaces, but she _has_ to pick the one closest to the damn personnel entrance and screw herself into a cock-eyed position barely between the lines.

            “Gee, now I see why you’ve failed your driver’s test twice,” I say as I hop out of the ship.

            “Oh, like you could do a better job,” Summer scoffs, jumping out after me. “So through that door?”

            “Mm-hm.”

            We shuffle through the badly painted side door, backpacks slung over our shoulders. Like I predicted, there weren’t any metal detectors or body screening machines waiting to ambush us. Hell, even the guard station where I’d assumed a Gromflomite would be stationed was empty. Our quick footsteps echo on the dark hallway tiles although we were trying to be quiet. No one in sight. This was either a g-good sign or a b-bad one.

            We keep hustling, not wanting to stop in case there _did_ happen to be a Gromflomite hiding out somewhere. This place was decorated like a hospital, with fountains of neon liquid and potted plants that were either really fake or really poisonous, all to give visitors the illusions that positive things happened here. Gloppydrop System Penitentiary’s website claimed to have some of the best rehabilitative services in this part of the galaxy, but the former convicts I’d met on Reddit told me otherwise. If by ‘rehabilitation,’ you included ‘questionably ethical interrogation and reprimand techniques,’ then sure, this place was exactly as it said it was.

            Eventually, we make it to the front desk. A female Gromflomite (or maybe it's male—I think the males have longer mandibles?) looks up at us with her brick-red compound eyes, claws tapping on a keyboard.

            “Uh, hi. We’re two new recruits for the security team, and we were assigned to the max security vault.”

            “Oh, of course! Let me just check on here…” She taps a few keys, then looks up again. “I’m sorry, but I’m not seeing any new recruits on the roster here.”

            “We were just added, um, yesterday!” Summer perks up, and I nod. “Head of security told us to swing by here and pick up a key card.”

            “I’m afraid I can’t let you back by the vault without proper clearance. I can call a senior escort for you if you need to get to training.”

            “Nonononononon—” I blurt, but the Gromflomite presses a button on her desk before I can get her to stop.

            “Your escort will be here shortly,” she says. Her mandibles are spread wide in what I guess would be a creepy smile if she were human. She gestures to a group of hard-backed chairs by the front door with a claw. “Please, have a seat while you wait.”

            I know it’s a trap. I know it’s a trap as soon as I turn on my heel, because I see the Gromflomite slam on a second larger button and guns spring out from places where they shouldn’t be l-like one of those stupid potted p-p-plants that I’m now _really_ sure are poisonous. Bugs are flying in from every which direction and Summer is screaming and I am forgetting how to breathe and in and out and in and out, or is it in in in then out?

            My hands are drawn behind my back, and one of the bugs sticks some kind of barb in my neck. Summer is flailing and kicking and still screaming like hell’s finest fury.

            “Morty Smith?” another bugs clicks with sick joy. “We have so many questions for you.”

            “Q-questions? About what?” I ask as more prison personnel swarm around us.

            “Oh cute, he’s playing stupid.” A third bug smacks me across the face with his claw. “About your _grandfather_ , you idiot! Rick Sanchez!”

            “I h-h-have no c-clue what the hell you’re talking about!” Whatever they stuck in my neck is making my blood buzz like a thousand angry hornets are stuck in my veins. Fuck…

            “He escaped from this penitentiary a week ago, and you’re telling us you’re just aware now of the fact that he’s gone? What, were you gonna drop by for a little visit?”

            “Hey, take it easy, Jeremy,” the first bug says. “He probably thinks his family’s little wall of immunity is still gonna help him out around here. Little does he know he gave that up as soon as his ship left Earth’s atmosphere!”

            Everything feels cold, so cold, like I’ve just been dunked in an ice bath. I can’t tell if it’s the drugs they shot into me or the sudden revelation that _Rick isn’t here. Rick is gone. Rick is gone he’s gone he’s gone he’s gone…_

            I feel something warm wrap around my upper arm, something familiar. Whatever it is yanks me through the crowd of Gromflomites and God knows what other alien freaks have clustered around us. I don’t know who it is, and at this point I don’t care. My feet find their bearings and scrabble against the mob, following whoever or whatever is pulling me through.

 

**Leona**

            _Estoy rezando,_ I am praying that this boy remembers how to run. I can’t afford to drag dead weight behind me, because they’ll catch us if he can’t get his feet under him. But _Dios mio_ , God is on our side and he runs, upper arm slipping out of my grasp and being replaced by his own hand. I am in my zone and pounding the tile floor like it’s the highway to Hell or stairway to Heaven, whichever will help us more now.

            He runs. I run. _Estamos corriendo._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uff da. That was a long one. 
> 
> Morty being dyslexic is a fairly recent idea I had. Dyslexia explains a lot of the learning difficulties Morty faces in school (aside from Rick constantly yanking him out of class), and it would explain Jerry's line in the pilot about Morty having some kind of learning disability. Morty's ability to draw is a common talent that appears in people with dyslexia--they're often very creative. 
> 
> Count the references to other R&M episodes. Go on, I dare ya.
> 
> And oh snap, looks like we've got a new character on our hands...


	5. Interrogations and Introductions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exactly what it says on the tin, broh.

**Summer**

            I am fuh-reezing when I come back around. Wherever they’ve got me is definitely below zero, and the itchy orange jumpsuit they tugged me into doesn’t cover my forearms at all. I reach my left hand over to rub my right arm, just for a bit of warmth, but it snaps back on a cord to my side. I try again—snap! It’s not until I crane over and look down as far as I can that I see my wrists and ankles are strapped to some kind of platform holding me upright. Great. I bet they took my phone, too.

            What are they gonna even ask me? Morty was the one with the notebook, the one with the plan. All I ever saw was the one page with scribbles and coordinates, nothing incriminating. I’m sure a quick Google Maps search would turn up the location of this prison. But what if that wasn’t true? What if Morty had done some secret back-page maneuvers in the darkest corners of the Internet to find it? Could I be held responsible for some hare-brained scheme if only the getaway car belonged to me?

            _You wanted to get Rick out of prison, too, you know_ , I think to myself.

            Yeah, and for what? He pretty much ignored me for the first few months after he crash-landed at our house (to hear Morty tell it, Grandpa just materialized on the snowy rooftop next to him, but I’m not buying that). Telling me how little my opinion means to him and whatnot. He’s pretty much the reason I ended up with the ship that’s probably being turned to scrap as I’m strapped here, though, and he’s actually become Morty’s friend. Never thought I’d see my little brother actually get a friend while he was still in high school. And for being a caustic, alcoholic asshole, he’s actually more in tune with what’s going on with Morty and I than our parents.

            My thoughts eventually turn back to what I’d mentioned on the ship after we’d made it through the atmosphere: Grandpa Rick’s wife. He reacted so badly after he came back from seeing Unity—what was he like when he broke up with someone he married? I was the one who’d found him out in the garage when he didn’t show up for breakfast the second morning in a row, by the way. _That_ was a sight for sore eyes.

            “Grandpa?” I’d said, nudging open the door to the garage. “Morty and I are gonna leave for schooOH MY GOD!”

            He was a mess of vomit, drool, and depression, slumped over his workbench like a puppet with all his strings cut away. Some kind of red bulb had blown out and scattered shards all over; the weird apparatus that looked like one of those old overhead projectors was still humming. A tiny pile of ashes was lying next to his head. I ended up telling Morty to go ahead to school and left late after hauling Grandpa back up to his room and tucking him into bed, putting his flask on the creaky wooden shelf by the door. It wasn’t until fifth-period civics that I finally put two and two together: Unity must have cut it off with Grandpa, and he tried to kill himself once he came home.

            I’ve never told Morty any of this. I think it’d wreck him.

            Anyway, my mind keeps circling around the question of Grandpa’s wife—I guess I should call her Grandma, but that feels too personal for someone I don’t know. Why did they divorce? Was their relationship better than Mom and Dad’s (not that it’d be hard to top that)? Where is she now, and why haven’t we met her? Why won’t Mom talk about her? And how messed-up did _she_ have to be to want to marry Grandpa Rick?

            That last question isn’t entirely fair, but I don’t have the time to rewrite it in my head before five Gromflomites burst into the room. Two take up their posts on either side of the door, one scrabbles in with some bundles of cable and clunky-looking lab equipment, one is fiddling with a tablet, and the last one comes clicking in wearing a bright green cardigan—I wish I were joking—and whatever passes for a smug look on a buggy face.

            “Summer Smith,” Cardigan Bug says, clasping one pair of its claws behind its back. “So good of you to join us.”

            “I think it’s you guys who joined me, actually, not the other way around.”

            “Yes, quite right, of course. Let me just have a chair and we can continue this conversation.” Tablet Bug darts into the shadows and totes a metal folding chair back for Cardigan Bug, who promptly unfolds it and sits down right in front of me. I can hear Cable Bug is fiddling with its equipment somewhere off to my left, but I can’t turn my head far enough to see.

            “You know, I think this whole arrangement is pretty unfair,” I quip. “If you’re expecting me to talk, this isn’t a level playing field with me being restrained and you sitting there freely.”

            Cardigan Bug rasps out a laugh. “We have a smart one on our hands,” it says to Tablet Bug, who immediately starts typing. It turns back to me before continuing. “My name is Dr. Kran…well, I don’t think your human vocal cords can pronounce it correctly, so you may call me Dr. K.”

            “Fine.”

            “We’re here today to have a little chat about your grandfather and brother. Do you feel up to the conversation?”

            “I don’t suppose I have a choice.” I’ve got a bad feeling about what Cable Bug is doing off to my side, and I’d like to avoid whatever torture device they’re assembling. “Lemme guess, you’re gonna clamp a car battery to my nipples if I don’t talk.”

            Dr. K laughs again. “A car battery! What do you take us for, barbarians? No, Ms. Smith, we have more elegant methods of getting you to speak up if need be. But I trust we won’t have to resort to those measures, will we?”

            “Wouldn’t plan on it.”

            “Good. Let’s begin with your grandfather, Rick Sanchez. When he kidnapped and abandoned you on Dwarf Terrace 9, how did you feel?”

            “Okay, first of all, we weren’t kidnapped. We were at the wedding of one of his best friends—”

            “A best friend who happened to be on a list of the Galactic Federation’s most wanted criminals, according to one of our finest deep-cover agents.”

            “Dammit, Tammy,” I growl.

            “What’s that?” Dr. K cocks its head. “Do you happen to know Agent Tammy Gueterman?”

            “I know her as someone I thought was my friend. She used me!”

            “It’s rational for you to be upset,” Tablet Bug speaks up. “Agent Gueterman has completed some of the Federation’s most successful deep-cover operations. The raid on Birdworld was just one—”

            “Marsha, I don’t believe you’re making Ms. Smith any more receptive to our conversation,” Dr. K interrupts, “so if you would kindly _keep your mouth shut._ ”

            Marsha clicks her mandibles together and sheepishly stares down at her tablet. Dr. K shifts in its seat and continues. “Regardless of how you ended up on Dwarf Terrace 9, you were nonetheless abandoned there by Sanchez. How did this make you feel?”

            I bite the inside of my lip, measuring my words. “I felt empty. Grandpa Rick and I weren’t close—I-I mean, we had a few adventures together, but for a long time he kinda didn’t seem to notice I was there.”

            “And yet you chose to rescue him?”

            “I didn’t really _choose_ to rescue him. I just…kinda felt obligated to.”

            Dr. K leans forward in its chair and rests its chin on the first pair of claws. “I don’t believe you’re telling me the whole truth, Summer. You want to tell me the truth, don’t you?”

            I hear some ominous buzzing off to my left where Cable Bug is working. I gulp and nod.

            “Of course you do. You’re a good human, a good girl. Now why don’t you tell me why you really decided to save your grandfather.”

            “He’s really important to my mom, okay? He-he’s my mom’s dad, and he wasn’t around much when she was little—”

            “I wonder why?” Dr. K asks. The two guards by the door snigger, and I glare at them. “Probably racking up the longest rap sheet of anyone ever registered in the Federation system, I imagine.”

            “Hey!” I shout. “You don’t know that! I bet you don’t have any basis for a huge amount of his so-called crimes, because you just made them up to advance your cause!”

            “Careful, Ms. Smith,” Dr. K says, holding up a claw. “That’s borderline treasonous talk right there. Remember, you’re a Federation citizen now, too, with Earth under our jurisdiction.”

            I gnaw on the inside of my cheek and count to ten before I open my mouth again. “Okay, fine. So maybe my grandpa has killed a few beings—”

            “Try a few _thousand_ beings, Ms. Smith. And those are just the ones we could readily identify within our databases, to say nothing of those he may have disposed of through other…unscrupulous means.”

            “Okay, yeah, that’s bad. But—”

            “Drug trafficking. Arms dealing. Child endangerment, based upon you and your brother being under Earth’s age of majority and the sheer nature of dangerous environments Sanchez has exposed you to. Support of prostitution in unauthorized jurisdictions. Money laundering. Manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. Aggravated assault. Grand theft, petty theft. Vandalism of all kinds. _And_ mounting an insurgency against the Galactic Federation, which he and his ragtag team have managed to keep alive for the last 40 years. That alone is in violation of several major Federal conventions.” Dr. K stands up, folds both sets of arms behind its back, and paces slowly up to me. “So I wish to ask you one more question, Ms. Smith: why do you think Rick Sanchez deserves to be a free man? _Why is he worth saving?_ ”

            I want so badly to answer. I want so badly to stand up for Grandpa when he’s not here, but I can’t say a word. Dr. K just rattled off a list of offenses that would put anyone on Earth behind bars for life, and to my knowledge this is the first time Grandpa has ever served time. Sure, he crash-landed in our lives, but we need him. Morty needs a friend, I need a grandpa, and Mom…well, Mom deserves a dad, even as an adult. And I think Dad needs someone who will stoke a fire under his butt every now and then.

            Instead, I keep my mouth shut. I close my eyes so Dr. K’s freaky red compound ones aren’t staring at me anymore, and I zip my lips and throw away the key. I hear a disappointed click come out from Dr. K’s mandibles.

            “Such a shame. I was prepared for an award-winning speech on the merits of love and family,” it hisses, inches from my ear. “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me anything about your brother’s plan, would you?”

            It takes every ounce of strength I have in me not to scream I DON’T KNOW as loudly as I can, and that is the truth. I saw no details of the plan—that was all Morty. _He_ should be the one they’re interrogating right now, not me. I have no idea where he is, only that he got yanked out of the crowd by someone when we got caught. Maybe he’s facing worse torture then I am now.

            “Very well. It seems you’ve clammed up. No matter, you weren’t terribly useful to us anyway. Derek, inject Ms. Smith with serum and prepare her for transport.”

            “Wait, WHAT?!” My eyes snap open. “Where the hell are you taking me?”

            “Certainly not back to Earth!” Dr. K chirps. “You might actually open your mouth down there. No, we’ll find a nice relocation spot for you. Somewhere cozy.”

            For the second time in hours or days, something gets stabbed into my neck and makes my brain go fuzzy. As I’m bleeding away from consciousness, Dr. K returns and towers over me, antennae twitching with glee.

            “By the way, I feel I should mention that we didn’t just find Sanchez by happy accident. No, we were tipped off by an intrepid little bird in the trees. Want to know who our handy little bird was?”

            If I shake my head or nod, I have no clue. It’s taking all my energy to glare up through rapidly closing eyelids.

            “None other than your father, of course. Jerry Smith.”

 

**Morty**

            I wake up with my cheek pressed to a pillow—wait, that can’t be right. I drag a hand over my eyes and push up on one elbow, blinking at my surroundings. This isn’t an interrogation room o-or some kind of torture chamber. For one thing, I don’t think they have beaded curtains hanging all around, or a napping nest full of cushy pink and gold pillows. Where am I?

            Then a sensory memory rushes forward: a warm hand wrapped around my forearm, tugging me away from danger. Running toward the unknown, but the unknown was better than w-wherever I was. Whoever that was, the one with the hand, must have brought me here.

            A silhouette steps into my line of vision and crouches down, pushing the bead strands aside. “Ah, _hola, muchacho!_ Welcome back to the land of the living.”

            “Muh…where am I? Who are you?”

            “Mm, I suppose you would be full of questions.” A tan hand brushes over my forehead and combs back through my hair. “ _Me llamo Leona._ ”

            “Uh, uh, _me llamo Morty._ ”

            “Oh, good, you’ve taken at least one Spanish class.”

            “Yeah, I-I have.” Spanish happens to be one of the few classes I actually do okay in, and also one of the few Rick has burst into to take me on an adventure.

            “ _Bueno._ I tend to slip back and forth, so it’ll be better if you can keep up.” Leona gets out of the crouch and wobbles a bit on her feet. “Come, come out to the kitchen. I’ll get you something to drink.”

            Her footsteps clunk out of the alcove. I really have nothing better to do—I feel like I’ve been asleep for a week—so I push myself up and follow her out into the tiniest, brightest kitchen I’ve ever seen. Leona stands at the scrubbed black counter, chopping something I can’t quite see. Her red hair, streaked with gray, is bound up in a tight bun at the nape of her neck.

            “Here,” she says, sliding a glass full of light green liquid and ice cubes toward me. “This is will perk you right up.”

            I pick up the glass and take a swig, only to spit it out when an overwhelming sour taste fills my mouth. “Oh my God, what _is_ this?”

            “Lime juice on the rocks.”

            “Why?!”

            “Because I’m all out of tequila.”

            “Ughgughguh,” I splutter. Leona turns to look at me, and I get a good look at her for the first time. It’s hard to say how old she is: the laugh lines around her mouth are practically etched into her face, but the bags under her eyes aren’t heavy like they are on Rick. Plus her body is all, I dunno, not saggy and whatnot. Her arm muscles flutter under her sleeve every time she brings the knife down on another lime.

            “Besides, Morty, _limones_ don’t keep for very long, and water is hard to come by in these parts, so,” she points the knife at my mostly-full glass, “drink up.”

            I wince and take another drink, which surprisingly doesn’t bite as much as the first one. Actually, it’s refreshing, and the nagging headache I’ve had since I woke up starts melting away. Soon I’ve finished the whole glass. Leona turns and leans against the counter with her own glass, sipping.

            “See?” she says. “Not so bad, is it?”

            “No, it’s pretty good. Uh, _gracias._ ”

            “Ah, I stand corrected. You’ve taken at least _two_ Spanish classes.” Leona pushes off the counter and clunks her way to the cockpit; I notice her heavy black combat boots for the first time. “ _Ven conmigo._ ”

            I’m not really sure where to put the empty glass, so I just set it next to the sink and follow her, feeling a lot like a puppy. The cockpit is huge, even bigger that the one in Rick’s ship: two cushy gray chairs for the pilot and co-pilot, and plenty of space to walk around both of them. A diamond-plate panel in the floor covers what I guess would be a bench seat like the one Rick ripped out of an old Buick. The windshield is pristine—no cracks or chips, and I feel like I can see the entire galaxy if I just stand in one place and stare.

            “Come, sit. I promise the chair won’t bite,” Leona grins.

            “Uh, weird question,” I say as I sit down. “Did you technically kidnap me?”

            Leona shrugs. “ _Más o menos._ ”

            “S-sorry, I don’t understand.”

            “It means yes, I did kidnap you, but I also saved you. If I hadn’t stepped in, you would be in the bowels of that prison, being questioned until you feel like your lips will fall off. And believe me, the Gromflomites are not kind to those they consider offenders to the Federation.” She takes a sip of her lime juice. “How old are you, Morty?”

            Is there really any point in lying? “Fifteen.”

            “Ay, so young to be out in space alone.”

            “A-actually, I wasn’t alone. My sister was with me—”

            “ _¿La pelirroja?_ The redhead?”

            I nod.

            “I am sorry I couldn’t save her, too. But as you can see, I’m not a young woman, and it took _todo mi fuerza_ just to drag you out of there.”

            “I-i-is she going to be okay?”

            “I have no way of knowing. It depends on how much information she is willing to give up to those bugs,” Leona scowls at the last word. “She seems like a tough girl, though, she’ll pull through.”

            I have never once in my life thought of Summer as tough, but I guess that wasn’t completely inaccurate. As much as I bitch about her, she’s not a horrible person. “Is there a way we could—?”

            Leona shakes her head with a sad smile. “I’m afraid there’s no way for me to go back. The Federation will be looking for me as well as you. It’s too risky.” She takes another sip. “By the way, why _were_ you two there anyway?”

            I bite my tongue, not sure of what I can and can’t say. So far, Leona seems trustworthy, but she was at the penitentiary along with all those bugs. Who’s to say she didn’t have a contact on the inside, and she didn’t just kidnap me to pull more info on Rick? Then again, what did I have to lose at this point? Mom and Dad would be freaked out right now, but getting back to Earth is low on my priority list, mostly because it seems impossible. Summer and I were separated with no foreseeable way to find each other again. With Leona, I was arguably safe: I had shelter, food (or at least lime juice to drink), and someone by my side so I wouldn’t feel so alone. What else was there to do besides talk?

            Before I open my mouth, Leona raises a palm toward me. “ _Perdóname,_ Morty. That was a complicated and unfair question to throw at you so soon after a trauma. Let us find someplace to eat, someplace to sit other than these ship seats, and we can get to know each other a bit better. If we break bread, we won’t break heads, no?”

            “Uh, yeah. I mean no. I mean—”

            She laughs, a long, rich laugh that reminds me of Mom’s morning coffee for some reason. “It’s okay, Morty. It’s okay. Don’t worry about stumbling, because that means you’re still walking.”

            I’m not sure what she means by that, but I do believe her about the being okay part. For the first time in hours or days, I believe I’ll be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first draft of Summer's scene with Dr. K was far more grim and gritty, with her actually getting zapped a few times because she refuses to talk. However, I thought this didn't fit in with the scope of the show (I'm trying to keep as true to the show's spirit as possible), so I revised it to be a bit lighter. It's still a serious scene, though.
> 
> Dr. K's name is Dr. Kafanzkra, an anagram of Franz Kafka, the author who wrote "The Metamorphosis." In that short story, the protagonist wakes and finds himself transformed into a giant insect.
> 
> I've always wondered who found Rick after the events of "Auto Erotic Assimilation." I decided Summer was the one who found him out in the garage and has simply never said anything about it to anyone.
> 
> Rick's rap sheet is based purely off of speculation, but I tried to pick crimes that made sense for him to commit. Some of those charges, like Summer asserts, are completely trumped up by the Federation to make Rick look worse. I mean, he copied a 100-flurbo bill ONE TIME...
> 
> Remember last chapter when Morty was revealed to have dyslexia? It turns out some dyslexic people can be quite good at learning another language, especially if it meets some linguistic criteria that are honestly too complicated for an author's note to explain. Anyway, Spanish happens to be one of the easier languages for dyslexic people to learn.
> 
> And Leona and Morty actually have their first conversation! She's a strange woman, Leona is, but I hope you liked your first (bigger) taste of her.


	6. Another Drink Gives You Time to Think

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leona and Morty go to a bar and learn more about each other, broh. And Morty gets his first drink!

**Leona**

            Offering to take Morty to find something to eat wasn’t pure _hospitalidad._ Those limes were the only edible thing left in my pantry, I’m ashamed to say—I didn’t realize it’d been so long since I’ve been on a supply run. We’ll have to find a general store or trading post to stock up later, but first things first. Besides, I really doubt Morty will try to run off if we land anywhere.

            We’re out in the Xera Nebula, which is familiar territory for me. It’s a rough part of space with little Federation influence; I’ve had a few clients from here who would be the equivalent to mob bosses on Earth. Not my proudest work—rounding up AWOL gangsters and turning them over to their former bosses is essentially signing their death warrants—but the rewards were sizeable. Oddly, the major language around here sounds like a cryptic dialect of Spanish, so if I speak slowly enough, I can be understood. We should be able to find _comida_ _y bebidas_ around here.

            “Ever been to an alien bar, Morty?” I ask, descending through the atmosphere of Ix, the largest planet in the nebula. Plumes of thick violet clouds swirl around the ship, and I have to squint hard to see my headlights just a few feet ahead of me.

            “D-does Blips and Chitz count?”

            Ah, Blips and Chitz. I’d caught a few prime targets in various locations dotted around the galaxy and found time to play a few games, too…okay, maybe I only played Tetris because that was the only familiar thing in that place. I wonder if my high score still stands in the Top 100 rankings.

            “That’s more of an adult entertainment venue, I think. Not _that_ kind of adult entertainment,” I say, shooting Morty a knowing look. “Just wondering what your familiarity was with this sort of place.”

            “Is it gonna be like the Cantina in _Star Wars_?”

            “The music will be better, trust me.” I flip on the auto-park switch and walk back to one of the storage lockers by the kitchenette. The light-blue flannel with the frayed sleeves I’ve been wearing comes off, and the ancient black motorcycle jacket goes on, chains and pins included. I debate whether to change my shoes, but decide the boots will be fine, mostly because I don’t want to see how filthy my socks must be. Ay, I’ll have to wash _mi ropa sucia_ when I get the chance. It’s amazing how having another person in your space makes your bad habits come to light.

            Morty stands up and stretches his arms high over his head, pulling his shirt just a bit over his tummy. He might be tall (not as tall as I am), but he is also _muy flaco._ Needs more meat on his bones if he’s gonna fill out to be a man someday. He scrubs a hand over his eyes and trots over to me as I close the locker and fiddle with my wallet.

            “You’re gonna want to take a hit off the oxygen mask before you go out there.” I jerk my thumb toward the apparatus hanging on the wall by the door. “This atmosphere is a little hard to get used to if you’re not accustomed to breathing nitrogen.”

            “Isn’t the atmosphere on Earth like 80% nitrogen?”

            _Santa mierda_ , the boy has paid attention in science class. “ _Sí_ , but our lungs are accustomed to a particular ratio of nitrogen to oxygen molecules, and we are only capable of processing oxygen through our respiratory system. Hence, the mask. Don’t worry, they’ll have a machine at the bar too if you start to feel lightheaded.”

            Morty takes the mask and draws a few deep breaths in and out, his eyelids fluttering. He starts giggling when he hands it to me. “I feel kinda funny.”

            “It’s oxygen, Morty, not nitrous oxide. You’re just nervous.”

            “I-I-I’m not nervous!”

            “Your stutter says otherwise.” I press the button to open the door and hop outside, letting my body get used to the difference in air pressure. Morty jumps out behind me, kicking up gold dust around his feet.

            “Whoa. Leona, I-I think this stuff is gold! Like, Earth gold!”

            “And you would be correct,” I reply. “But it doesn’t mean anything to these people since it’s everywhere. It’d be functionally useless as a basis for currency.” I see him bend down out of the corner of my eye and scoop up a handful to put in his pocket. The other bar-goers are gonna think he’s strange for having a pocket full of sand, but whatever. We’re humans, we’re already going to stick out.

            A sleek-looking building with glowing yellow glyphs beckons me, mostly because right underneath the glyphs the word BAR is in capital letters. They’ve redecorated since I’ve last been here, because it used to look exactly like an abandoned set for a spaghetti Western film. I snap my fingers for Morty to follow me, and we march up to the door and push our way inside. Immediately I’m confronted with the overwhelming stink of sulfur, which I think is coming from the massive slug-like creature in the corner by the karaoke machine. Morty winces and covers his nose. I stride over to the bar and slip onto an empty hovering stool, beckoning Morty to the one next to me.

            “I-I-I think I’m gonna need that oxygen sooner than I thought,” he gasps, removing his hand from his mouth. He _does_ look a little blue in the face just from our short walk, but the slug guy isn’t doing him any favors, either.

            “ _Oye, camarero! ¿Podríamos obtener una máquina de oxígeno, por favor?_ ”

            The bartender peeks out from behind one of his massive bat-like wings and sidles over, a mini oxygen tank and cannula gripped in his claw. He plunks it down in front of Morty, who hurriedly loops the tube over his ears and pushes the nubbins into his nose, heaving a sigh of relief when it kicks in.

            “Ohhh…thank you _._ ”

            The bartender nods at him and gurgles at me for my order.

            “ _Tendré una Cuba Libre, y…_ Morty, what would you like?

            “Oh g-gosh, I dunno. Water?”

            The bartender’s beady eyes fly open; a few shocked patrons glance in our direction. I nudge Morty in the ribs to get his attention.

            “Water is poisonous to many beings around these parts, Morty. You’ll have to ask for something else.”

            “W-w-what else can I have?”

            “ _Tendrá una Cuba Libre también_ ,” I blurt to the bartender. “ _Y cualquier cosa que pasa por papas fritas aquí. Quémalos, por favor_ _._ ”

            Satisfied, the bartender grunts and flaps away from us. Morty spins to look at me with wide eyes. “D-did you just buy alcohol for me?”

            “ _Sí._ ”

            “Th-that’s illegal! I’m a minor! Don’t they check IDs at this place?”

            I raise an eyebrow, quizzical. “Do you have an ID for them to check?”

            “Well, no, but—”

            “Then don’t worry about it.” The highball glasses slide down the bar toward us, and Morty fumbles to catch the first one and pass it to me before grabbing his own. “Besides, even if you had one, they couldn’t read it what it said.”

            “I guess not. Hehe,” Morty chuckles, stirring the ice around with his skinny black straw. His apprehension is almost endearing, like a puppy afraid to jump in a lake for the first time. I take a sip from my own drink to encourage him.

            “Go on,” I nod at him. “It’s dark rum and Coca-Cola with lime juice.”

            “They have Coca-Cola out in space?”

            “Never underestimate corporate power and reach, Morty. Coke is _everywhere._ ”

            He brings the glass up to his lips and takes a small drink, then another, and another. When he sets the glass back on the bar again, he’s licking his lips, soaking in the flavor.

            “W-wow, that’s pretty sweet. Like candy sweet.”

            “It’s a good starter drink,” I remark.

            “I k-kinda always thought my first drink would be with Rick, y’know? He keeps his flask on him all the time, or at least he did before he got locked up. But I sorta imagined he’d call me out to the garage one night or something and say, ‘H-here, Morty, take a swig o’ this, it’ll make you feel good.’ And I’d do it, and I might throw it back up afterwards, and he’d laugh, but it’d be a memory between us.”

            Morty looks down at his drink with melancholy, and I wince. I hadn’t meant to take what should have been a special moment away from him and Rick, however they were related. “This Rick of yours. You said he was locked up?”

            “Y-yeah. The Federation caught him doing…well, I don’t know what, and he’s been in prison for like six months. Earth months, I mean. I-I don’t know how they keep track of time out here.”

            I ignore how my blood runs cold at the thought that _we’re possibly talking about the same Rick._ “Was that why you were at Gloppydrop Penitentiary? To see him?”

            The muscles in Morty’s shoulders tense; he clutches his glass harder. “Kind of. We were, uh, looking for him—”

            “HA!” I laugh. “You and everyone else this side of the universe!”

            Morty looks dumbfounded. “So those bugs were right, and I wasn’t dreaming? Rick escaped?”

            _Mierda_ , he knows more than he lets on. Clever boy. I start stirring my ice with my straw, trying to keep cool. “ _Sí_. He had some kind of accomplice, though. Someone helped him escape, and the Federation hasn’t been able to figure out who or what it is.”

            “So it was all for nothing,” Morty mumbles. “All the planning, all the triple-checking and journey with Summer…it was all pointless.” Tears are beading at the corners of his eyes, and he sniffles. “I just wanted to help…”

            “No no no no, Morty,” I say, reaching out and touching his shoulder. He surprisingly doesn’t swivel away from my hand. “You were still helping, _muchacho._ You just didn’t know he was gone.”

            “So now I’m stuck out here in the middle of God knows where, drinking alcohol in an alien bar.” Without warning, he starts giggling through the tears. “Oh my God, that would be such a Rick thing to do. Give up and go drink.”

            “In a way, we’re honoring his memory if that’s really what he’d do.” I shrug, taking another pull off my drink. “Say, weren’t we supposed to get to know each other a bit more? Forget Rick for a little bit. I think I owe you at least three questions.”

            “Huh?”

            “I asked you at least three questions back on the ship. It’s only fair if you ask me three so we get on even footing.”

            “Uh, okay.” Morty takes an extraordinarily large gulp of his Cuba Libre and sets the nearly-empty glass on the bar. “Where are you from?”

            Really? Of all the things he could ask, he goes for the first-day-of-school icebreaker? Oh well, that’s an easy one to answer. “Earth. _Nací en Cuba, pero me mudé a los Estados Unidos cuando tenía diecisiete años._ ”

            “Uh, okay. Something about the United States when you were seventeen…I guess you moved. And something about Cuba. Were you b-born there?”

            I nod. “My parents sent my brother and I to Miami to get away from Castro.”

            Morty furrows his brow. “Wait, you mean that crazy old dictator from Cuba?”

            “ _Sí._ Back then he was only the Prime Minister, but _mis padres_ saw the signs. They saw we had no place in the future with the plans Castro had for the country, so they got my brother and I spots on a cargo plane loaded with tobacco and headed for Miami. That was the last time I ever saw them.” I swill my drink around in my hand, watching the ice cubes dance.

            “Geez. I-I’m sorry if I brought up any bad memories—”

            “No, no, it’s fine. It was so long ago that it doesn’t hurt as bad as it did. Like a faded bruise; you only remember it’s there if you bump into it again.”

            The bartender pushes a basket of bright purple _papas fritas_ between Morty and I, burnt to a crisp like I asked, along with another Cuba Libre for him. Morty idly grabs a handful of fries and starts chewing them one at a time, thoughtful. Only when he finishes his first portion and takes another does he ask me his second question.

            “So how old are you? S-sorry, my history isn’t that good.”

            “I don’t know how to answer you.”

            “Huh?”

            “I mean, I don’t know how to answer that question because I’m not sure how to tell how much time has passed. You’d be familiar with Earth time, but every planet rotates at different speeds and angles, and I never stay in any one place too long. I can tell you that when I left Earth, I had just turned forty-three.” I finish my Cuba Libre and motion for another. “Why do you ask, out of curiosity?”

            “Um, well, I, uh…” _Dios_ , the boy is blushing. “It’s just that you’re really attractive for however old you are. Not saying old people are ugly or anything!” He throws up his palms defensively. “You’re, like, in good shape and everything, like you work out o-or—”

            I decide to give him shit, fluster him more. “Morty,” I say coyly, “are you hitting on me?”

            “W-what?! No! I mean, not that you don’t _deserve_ to get hit on, but I mean…damn, Leona, I’m fifteen, and I’m really digging myself into a hole here!”

            I can’t hold back my laughter any longer. I swallow my drink and guffaw, throwing my head back and nearly tipping off the barstool. “Oh, _Dios mio,_ sweet boy, I was _kidding._ I know you had to be joking.”

            Morty takes a moment to process this, then he starts chuckling nervously. It sounds even more strained with the cannula in his nose. “Heheh, yeah. Yeah, I was kidding. I guess it’s a good joke…”

            “You need to learn to laugh at yourself from time to time, Morty,” I right myself and grab his shoulder, squeezing gently. “Life is too short to take everything so seriously. Now, I believe you have one more question you can ask me.”

            “Mm-okay. Y-you said you move around a lot, and you don’t really stay in one place for too long. W-what do you do for money or a job or whatever?”

            My heart skips a few beats. There’s really no way for me to skirt around this one—I didn’t promise to tell Morty the truth, but I don’t feel completely comfortable lying to him, either. Since he’s with me indefinitely, the odds are pretty good that I’ll have to go on a few missions to keep our money up enough to feed us both. So there’s a very good chance he’ll catch on to what I do for work eventually. Might as well break it to him now.

            I drop my hand from his shoulder, turn toward the bar, and take a few long pulls of my drink. When I finish my last swallow, I whisper low enough for him to lean in: “ _Soy cazadora de recompensas._ ”

            “I’m sorry, what?”

            I exhale as much air as I can get through my nose and tuck a stray hair behind my ear. If I look at him, I don’t think I’ll be able to repeat myself, so I stare into the warm brown depths of my Cuba Libre.

            “Bounty hunter.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We finally get to hear from Leona for a full chapter (again). I apologize if this seemed especially dialogue-heavy, but there's only so much moving around two characters can do when they're sitting at a bar. Besides, I think it's time we learned a little bit about Leona as a character. Not sure how that last line is gonna go over with Morty, though.
> 
> I tried to write Leona's dialogue so that the Spanish is clear either from context or Morty repeating it back in English. If anything is baffling to you, let me know in the comments and I'll be happy to translate.
> 
> I personally think Morty was a real stickler during those few parties they've had so far in the show about drinking alcohol, so he imagines his first drink would be with Rick in a somewhat less than responsible situation. Leona at least tries to watch him. 
> 
> And if you're worried about Summer, you won't have to for too much longer. I wonder where the Gromflomites are transporting her...?


	7. Re-Unity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer wakes up on a foreign planet and meets up with a Character of the Week, broh.

**Summer**

            Have you ever fallen asleep in a snowbank? I’m not talking about tumbling off your sled and rolling down the hill for a few feet. I mean being completely engulfed head to toe in snow, like a gigantic blizzard covered you with a white blanket. That’s how I woke up, with nothing but a thin orange coat to keep me warm. No hat, no boots. Not even those cheap black cotton gloves you get at the dollar store. I take back everything that I said before about being cold— _this_ right now is the coldest I’ve ever been in my life.

            The only thing that fuels me digging out of the snow with my bare hands is anger. I’m not only shaking because of what I’m sure is hypothermia, I’m shaking because I’m _pissed._ Pissed at Morty for dragging me into this mess. Pissed at the Federation for taking me captive, violating several of my civil rights by holding me like that for questioning, and then dumping me off in this frozen wasteland that I have no hopes of navigating because _every snowbank looks the same_. Most of all, I’m pissed at Dad. I have a lot of reasons to be upset with him: he’s never paid back the money he’s borrowed from me to make failed ad pitches, he has no spine and lets Mom walk all over him, he rarely takes an interest in my life. The only time he pays any attention to Morty is when he’s worried the school might call about all his absences with Rick. Otherwise he just sits around when he’s not working popping balloons on that stupid tablet of his that I want to break in half.

            “He ratted Grandpa out,” I growl through gritted teeth as I hoist my upper body out of the snowbank. “How? _How_ could he do something like that?”

            It’s no secret that Dad resented Grandpa Rick crash-landing into our lives the way he did. I’m not defending Grandpa’s behavior at all, because he really can be a dick with all his insults, but I can’t help but think Dad deserves some of the flak he gets. I mean, he knocked up Mom when they were in high school, when Mom was my age. The thought of being a teen parent makes me cringe, no matter how much they glamorize it on cable TV. It’s not like they didn’t have the Pill or condoms in the 90’s. And with Dad losing his job shortly after Christmas, he was at a personal low point when Grandpa Rick showed up. Grandpa Rick just brought all of his shortcomings to the surface practically every day with little jibes, and I guess that wears on a person.

            Still. Does that warrant ratting Grandpa out to the cops? He was our only ticket off of Dwarf Terrace 9 if the Feds hadn’t arrived to take us back to Earth—why shoot us in the foot like that? I mean, Dad is very good at sticking his foot in his mouth, but that’s a little different.

            One thing’s for sure: if I ever make it out of this frozen hellscape and back home, I am never speaking to Dad again. I’ll switch phone numbers and carriers so he can’t call me, move so far away he can’t find me. Technically, I am already where he can’t find me, but I was thinking more like New Mexico right by Area 51. Maybe I could work as a specialist there, seeing how I’ve met aliens and stuff. First I have to get out of here, though.

            Eventually I wade out to where the snow is just over knee-deep. My hands finally feel a little warm from keeping them tucked under my armpits, so I dare to pull them out from under my arms and try the zipper again. It’s a bitch trying to wrangle the flapping coat down so I can line everything up, then another story getting the pull to work. But I finally manage to get myself zipped inside the coat, which is actually pretty warm, and pull the furry hood up so my ears don’t freeze off any more than they already have. I just wish this thing wasn’t orange, though—it totally washes out my complexion.

            Left, right, left, right. I have no way of telling if I’m walking in a straight line or a circle, because the wind blows over my footprints almost as soon as I make them. I shove my hands deep into the fur-lined pockets (seriously, fur!) and keep trudging. I’ve got to find someone or something that’s not snow sooner or later, right? Honestly, I wouldn’t even care if I ended up in some screeching monster’s stomach right about now. At least it’d be warm inside their body.

            Snow and wind keep pricking my eyes, making it hard to see, but I could swear just ahead I see something bright yellow. It looks like a person standing upright wearing a hideous winter coat, though I guess I’m not in any position to judge fashion right about now.

            “Hey!” I holler and wave my arms. “HEY!” There’s no guarantee the thing, whatever it is, can understand English or hear me. Shot in the dark, though, right? “HEY! I COULD REALLY USE SOME HELP RIGHT NOW!”

            Bright Yellow turns in my direction. I keep waving my arms, hoping I’ve got its attention. I don’t care if my hands fall off at this point from being frostbitten beyond hope. For good measure, I start jumping up and down, up and down…

            Until the snowpack falls right out from under me and sends me plummeting down into a crevasse. I scream, but it’s swallowed up by the wind as I fall. I hit a pile of snow at the bottom of the crevasse, tears freezing in the corners of my eyes as I cry. I was so _close_ , dammit, and now I’m gonna die here. All I wanted was to feel warm again—why can’t I ever have nice things?

            The last thing I see is a flash of bright yellow and an eerily familiar shade of light blue before I pass out.

 

**Unity**

I’ve been sensing a foreign living presence on the planet for days now. That’s my specialty, after all, seeking out new lifeforms to potentially assimilate. The presence is weak, a faint pulse niggling at the edge of my consciousness, but it’s nevertheless there. Beta 7 said I was crazy to go looking in this blizzard, yet I had to sate my curiosity as to who it was.

            I get to work, six emergency medical workers setting up heating equipment and propping up the stranger I’ve found. I strip off the orange coat and gasp when I see who is hiding under the furry hood.

            Summer Smith. It’s so good to see you again.

 

**Summer**

            A pair of wide golden eyes are staring down at me when I wake up, giving me the biggest jump-scare of my life. I scream, flinch back, and almost tumble off of the couch I’m lying on before someone catches me and lifts me up again.

            “Summer! You’re awake!” an alien in a set of bright-green scrubs says. “Oh, this is good news!”

            “Very good news, indeed,” a deeper voice booms from behind me. I crane my neck back to see a short but well-muscled alien with the same light blue skin as the first. Silver earrings glint from both of his ears. “We thought we lost you.”

            “Wait, wait, who’s this _we_?” I ask, confused.

            “Us, of course,” a third alien replies, reworking her hair into a ponytail, again with the same skin. “We were very concerned given how cold it is out there. It’s barely tolerable for us in our foul-weather gear.”

            It dawns on me who I’m speaking to as soon as I hear a pair of heels clicking frantically across the floor. “Hold on. _Unity?_ ”

            “Yes!” a fourth voice says, and a familiar-looking alien wearing a red power suit and a scrunched-up look of worry on her face comes around the corner. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ve spent so much time around hive minds lately I forget that single-minds like you can’t recognize solely by personality. You need consistent physical appearances as well.”

            Ah, yep, this is definitely Unity. Got that not-so-vague twinge of being insulted roiling in my midsection like I felt when I first met her…them…wait, does Unity have a gender? “Yeah,” I say, “I mean, I did just get pulled in from a massive snowstorm and have these clumsy bandages wrapped around my arms and legs,” I wave my bulky arm, which I’ve only recently discovered, for good measure, “so I guess getting talked to through different alien bodies was only a little confusing.”

            Unity winces at my sarcasm. “I really am sorry, Summer. Confusion is not what you need right now. You need time to heal and feel better.”

            Great, now I feel like a jerk. “I didn’t mean to snap, Unity. I’m…” I look around the room, which appears to be the most comfortable living room I’ve ever been in. I’m lying on a long, twisty sectional the color of Mom’s favorite wine, with throw blankets draped over the back. A couple footstools squat in front of two cushy black armchairs that flank a giant white stone fireplace. This place is _fancy_ , wherever it is. “I’m not back on your home planet, am I?”

            Power Suit Unity shakes her head. “As a hive mind, I have no place I can really call ‘home.’ My home is where my subjects live, and wherever they choose to move. Well, wherever _I_ choose to move, but I and we are all the same to me.” She giggles, and I’m left more confused than ever.

            “So, where…?”

            “Ah, yes. This is Kiyu, a snowy planet several thousand light-years away from where we first met. After I broke up with your grandfa—I mean, Rick—I thought a change of scenery was in order.”

            “The tundra _is_ a pretty big change,” I shrug. “Bad break-ups need some distance afterward, I guess.”

            Power Suit Unity raises her eyebrow at me. The rest of the aliens take some inaudible cue and walk out, leaving the two of us alone. “Bad break-up?”

            “Grandpa Rick tried to kill himself when he got home.”

            She claps a hand to her mouth, astonished. “No…no, I thought I was gentle about it!”

            “Well apparently not, because I found him drunker than usual and passed out in my parents’ garage under some kind of mini death ray! What did you say to him, Unity?”

            “I didn’t say much. Actually, I didn’t really _say_ anything,” she rubs the back of her neck sheepishly. “I might have more or less abandoned the planet _en masse_ and left a series of notes explaining my behavior for him to find after he got out of the bathroom.”

            “You broke up with my grandpa through _letters_?! You couldn’t have done it face-to-face, or faces-to-face, or whatever? God, Unity, that’s almost as bad as a break-up text!”

            “I know, I know!” Unity howls, pressing her fingers to her temple. “And I’m sorry, truly. I’m sorry you had to find him like that—I thought he would have handled things a bit better now that he’s older, but I miscalculated.” She rests her pointy blue chin on her fist and smiles at me sadly. “Even hive minds can miscalculate sometimes. Mistakes are natural.”

            “What’s _not_ natural is you not checking the mail,” a high, nasally voice sasses from another room, and a squatty grayish alien that looks like a humanoid penguin crossed with a cyborg comes waddling into the room, a stack of papers in his hand. “Really, Unity, there’s mail dated from two weeks ago in here!”

            “Beta 7, please! We have a guest, and I’d like it if we didn’t fight in front of her.” Unity waves a hand toward me. “This is Summer, Rick Sanchez’s granddaughter.”

            “Ah. Hello.” Beta 7 gives me a stiff nod. “I don’t suppose this is the same Rick that came to my doorstep pining for you after your break-up and is, incidentally, the very same Rick that is now an intergalactic fugitive, is he?”

            The muscles in Unity’s jaw clench hard. “He did not _pine_ for me. He wanted to talk to me, which I didn’t want to do at that moment.”

            “I had to classify him as a hostile entity.”

            “You’d classify your breakfast cereal as a hostile entity if it made you choke in the morning, Beta 7. I suggest you leave the room. _Now._ ” I feel something like static electricity crackle right by my ears, and Unity is glaring holes right through the stubby penguin man.

            “Fine, fine,” Beta 7 says, chucking a heavy white envelope onto the couch before toddling off. “Didn’t realize it was a crime to speak the truth in this house.”

            “There is such a thing as being rude to guests!” Unity yells over her shoulder as the door to the next room swings shut. “UGH! Some days…”

            “Please tell me you’re not sleeping with him,” I blurt.

            “Oh heavens, no,” Unity replies, fiddling with the envelope. “We are…cohabiting for the moment while we try to plan our next move. I failed to get my previous planet initiated into the Intergalactic Federation, but since my people moved from their original planet, I’ve considered applying for a special status as Displaced Persons.”

            “Can you do that?”

            “The Federation can’t keep track of every planet in every galaxy, as much as they’d like to think so. Besides, the status is only a pawn for me to gain access to other worlds.”

            “Oh,” I swallow. “Right. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, and hive minds gotta…possess people, I guess?”

            Unity stops jabbing at the envelope with her nails long enough to look up at me. “Ah. You’re still unsettled about peace coming at the cost of individuality, aren’t you?”

            “Well, yeah. It’s just different where I come from, Unity. We get to do whatever we want with some limitations, and we just hope that people choose to do the right things most of the time.” I shrug. “And it works. Kinda.”

            Unity smiles and re-adjusts her glasses. “I want you to know that I don’t do what I do to harm others, Summer. My ambitions are entirely benevolent: to unify all of existence in harmony. I suppose you could say I am committing violence when I overtake bodies and become them, but that is your perspective. The end goal, harmony, is worth some small sacrifice, isn’t it?”

            I’ve still got this uneasy feeling in my stomach, which Unity must sense, because she continues. “Besides, I have no way to access Earth right now, if that’s your concern. You won’t have to worry about any human’s individuality disappearing for a long ti—ah-hah!” She tears a thick packet out of the shredded envelope and scans the front page, her victorious smile curving downward with each passing second. “Oh. Oh, this is not good.”

            “What? What does it say?” I ask. I crane over as far as I can in these bandages to peek at the packet, but Unity tugs it away from my view.

            “It says that effective as of this letter’s signing, you are officially my captive.”

            “WHAT?!”

            “ _Summer Smith has passed preliminary interrogations with the Ministry of Criminal Inquiry, but may still be needed back for further questioning. In the meantime, she is to be under your immediate supervision at all times and is not permitted to leave the planet’s outer spatial boundaries under threat of further prosecution from the Intergalactic Federation. Maintain these conditions, and the Ministry may put in a good word regarding your status as a Displaced Person_ —it’s Displaced Person _s_ , you idiot! I am not one entity!”

            I quirk an eyebrow. “I thought you _were_ one entity.”

            “I can simultaneously be defined as both one and many. In reality, hive minds are beyond classifications devised by single-minded organisms. The only one who understood that concept was Rick.” Unity sighs and tosses the packet on the coffee table near us. “The rest of that are papers I’m supposed to file regarding your staying here. I’ll take care of that later.”

            “So, I’m stuck here,” I say. I raise a bandaged hand and rub against my hair—I _still_ haven’t had a shower since I left home. I wonder if getting a shower would be against some unwritten captive rules or something.

            “I’m afraid so. You’ll still be treated as a guest, regardless of what the Federation might say. I doubt they’ll attempt to send an agent to check up on how I’m mistreating you.” Unity gives me a sly grin. “What do you want to do now?”

            “I want to talk,” I squirm myself up to a sitting position. “Specifically, I want to talk about my Grandpa Rick.”

            “Of course,” Unity replies, curling her legs and feet under her on the couch. “Anything you want to know.”

            It’s occurred to me that Grandpa must have spent a lot of time with Unity for their break-up to have such a big impact on him. They must know each other pretty well, unless they spent all their time having sex and _not_ talking, which I highly doubt. And if Grandpa and his wife divorced, Unity seems like the perfect ex for him to run and vent to. All I have is time right now. Might as well give this a shot.

            “Grandpa Rick was married once upon a time. He had a wife,” I say. “What do you know about her?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, now we know what Dr. K meant when it said prepare Summer for transport back in Chapter 5! Sheesh, she is not happy about this development. You wouldn't be too happy either if you were stuck on a rotating snowball of a planet, either.
> 
> I know Unity technically has no gender as a hive mind, but since the character was voiced primarily by Christina Hendricks in the show, I went with she/her for pronouns for simplicity's sake. 
> 
> Beta 7 is an annoying little twit and shall be regarded as such in my book. 
> 
> Hmm, I wonder how much Unity will actually end up knowing about Rick's ex-wife? Sorry if Summer seems so singularly focused on this issue; hopefully it's not to the exclusion of any character development. She's just curious, as I'm sure many of you are.


	8. An Easy Job

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty goes on his first bounty hunt, broh!

**Morty**

            I’m standing in front of a wall display of plumbuses, staring up at them. What’s amazing to me about traveling across the multiverse, more than all the weird stuff I’ve seen, is how much is the same. I mean, aliens have big-box stores just like we do on Earth. They’ve got cereal aisles and checkout lanes and overhead calls for price checks—I think that’s what they’re doing, anyway, I can’t understand the gargling. They’ve even got mass quantities of seemingly useless shit like plumbuses that they sell by the case. Who needs that many?

            “H-hey, Leona,” I call behind me as she rolls up with the shopping cart. “What does a plumbus do, anyway?”

            “Your guess is as good as mine, Morty,” she replies, looking down her holographic shopping list. “There’s one of them hanging up in the linen closet on the ship if you want to play with it.”

            “I mean, do you even play with it? Do you, like, clean up messes with the little pink tentacle thingies and that long part is the handle? Like, what is the point?”

            “I assume it’s supposed to be a knick-knack.” Leona glances up at the wall display, then back to me. “Don’t ask me, it was in my ship when I got it. Maybe it’s a good luck charm? _Yo no sé._ Come on, we’ve got everything.”

            I turn away from the neon-pink sign advertising a case of 25 plumbuses for apparently a low, low price of 50 schmeckles and follow Leona down the aisle past other bizarre alien gadgetry. Her cart is thankfully full of food I can easily recognize; according to her, Earth food is much easier to get in space now that we’re part of the Federation. Apples, lemons, limes, bags of leafy green vegetables that I don’t usually like but I’ll eat, and boxes of beans, crackers, and pasta are piled up in the cart, along with a delicious pack of Oreos—‘those are mine, but I can share,’ Leona said—and a 20-pack of Coke. The only things we can’t buy easily are dairy and meat, but she says there are alien substitutes that’ll work out fine. “I’ve gone long periods of time without eating either of those things, but sometimes I can’t pass up a good Shlox burger and a cup of ice-cold milk from a Gyrt,” she told me.

            Leona is actually a pretty relaxing person to travel with. She lets me sleep as much as I want, plays the intergalactic radio while we’re flying—she has good taste in music, kinda like Rick—and genuinely acts interested in me as a p-person. She even does that thing where she swings her arm across my chest to keep me from jerking forward when some ship pulls out on us, like Mom does when some asshole cuts us off in traffic. It feels protective, almost maternal, and Leona doesn’t even know who I am. She also let me put a box of vanilla sugar wafers in the cart and didn’t question why I wanted them, so that’s cool.

            Still, there’s something about her that’s really unsettling: the fact that she’s a bounty hunter. I sorta expected half the bar to spring up and point their guns at her when she mentioned it, but apparently we were among semi-safe company. None of her active targets were in that particular nebula at the time, she told me after we got back in the ship. It’s not like I’m traveling with an assassin o-or anything, yet part of me is still queasy about her line of work. Are we gonna get shot out of the sky sometime when we’re minding our own business? Is there a giant bullseye painted on Leona’s back? What if she does get hurt or killed—who am I gonna turn to then?

            “ _No se preocupe_ ,” she said, sensing my apprehension after we took off from Ix. “I will keep you safe.”

            Leona pushes into a checkout lane and starts loading our food onto the belt. I preoccupy myself with pretending to be interested in alien chewing gum and magazines while listening to her chit-chat with the cashier in that garbled talk I heard on the PA system. Rick has zero p-patience with small talk, let alone shopping for groceries. I can’t imagine him being out in space by himself trying to live like Leona does, but he must have done it. Either that or he stole all the food he didn’t buy in a restaurant. Yeah, that makes more sense. Leona is definitely not like Rick in that way: she’s actually nice to other lifeforms that aren’t like her.

            “All this for 300 schmeckles?” Leona pulls out her wallet and starts counting out shiny green coins. “I say we made out like bandits today.”

            The cashier grunts, absorbs the coins into its tentacle, and hands over three burlap sacks full of our stuff. Leona motions for me to take one and hoists the other two on her shoulders, heading for the exit.

            “Y-you sure you don’t want me to take another bag?” I ask, scrambling after her.

            “No, no,” she replies. She’s paused in front of one of those massive bulletin boards that are usually covered with lost pet notices and babysitter ads back at home. This one, though, is digital, and it’s plastered with mugshots of various aliens with the word WANTED flashing in English and four other languages I can’t read.

            “They put up wanted posters at the grocery store?” I cock my head while Leona swipes through them with her finger.

            “Bounty hunters need to do their shopping somewhere,” Leona throws me a wink. “ _Pero en serio,_ it’s a personalized billboard. Cameras scan who you are, match you up to media clips, government databases, all that junk, and show you things based on what they think your interests are. My job is rather interesting to me, so they show me wanted posters.”

            “W-wait. You’re a _known_ bounty hunter?”

            “ _Sí_. I used to work for the Federation, going after criminals even the seasoned Gromflomites didn’t want to hunt down. I assume they still retain my information on file as a former employee.”

            “Wouldn’t that make your job harder? I-I mean, if someone’s on the run, they’re gonna be smart and keep an eye out for you.”

            Leona turns to me, gives me a lazy grin. “This is a _vast_ multiverse, Morty, you can’t know everyone. And in this vast multiverse, there are a lot of very stupid beings on the run from the law. You overestimate their intelligence.” She turns back to the bulletin board/billboard and flips through a few more posters before pausing on one. “Ah! He’s back at it again, is he?”

            “Who is it?” The creature looks a lot like that one alien Rick had chained up in his lab below the garage that Mom and Dad eventually discovered, only with orange slimy skin instead of yellow.

            “You’re looking at Tim-Tam, Crown Prince of the Korblocks. He’s not a criminal, but he’s got a nasty habit of running away from his responsibilities.” Leona taps the photo, and a curling piece of paper spits out from a slot under the board. “Grab that, that’s our contact info for collecting the reward.”

            “W-we’re gonna actually go hunting for someone? L-like for a bounty?”

            “ _Sí_ , Morty. It’ll be an easy job, don’t worry.”

            We hustle onto the ship and shove the groceries into the right cabinets. Leona grabs a stack of Oreos and carries them to the cockpit, offers me a couple as we sit down and she dials up the string of numbers on the keyboard. A calling tone buzzes through the ship three times before a Korblock answers, even bigger and orange-er than Tim-Tam with a long purple shawl wrapped around its…shoulders, I guess.

            “Leona!” the Korblock booms. He has a translation device pressed up to his neck, similar to what Rick had in his lab. “Just the lovely woman I was hoping to see!”

            “You flatter me, Your Majesty,” Leona presses a hand to her chest.

            “Mm. Ah, and who’s _this_?” The Korblock king pivots to squint at me. “You didn’t tell me you had a lover.”

            “Your Majesty, no! How old do you think I am?” I blush and squish down in my seat as Leona continues. “This is Morty. Consider him my…apprentice.”

            “Apprentice? Mm. I suppose one does need a lot of training in your line of work.”

            “Morty, this is His Royal Majesty King Tu-Tel of the Korblocks,” Leona waves a hand toward the screen. “He’ll be the one paying our reward—”

            “ _If_ you can find my son,” King Tu-Tel cuts across. “Which I trust you can, given your past success with this job. The offer has gone out to several other hunters, obviously, but I was _so_ hoping you’d be the first one to call. You seem to have a knack for knowing just where he is, unlike those other hunters who take _weeks_ to find him.” He drums his fingers on his hip. “The reward is the usual price, but open to a possible bonus if you can do this discreetly.”

            “Of course, Your Majesty. I’ll get on it right away. See you soon.” Leona presses the end-call button on her dashboard, and King Tu-Tel vanishes from view. “I’m _always_ discreet, you overgrown slug. I swear…”

            “So we’re just going to go pick up some bratty prince that doesn’t want to do his job?” I ask.

            Leona looks over at me, rubbing her temple. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, Morty. Let’s focus on locating Tim-Tam first, then I’ll explain. And I think I know exactly where to find him.”

            She taps a few keys on the dashboard, then pushes away from it. The ship then launches into hyperdrive, and stars become tiny streaks before our eyes. “I’m setting our course for one of the royal Korblock vacation houses. Tim-Tam is usually much more evasive, but since I just caught him a short time ago out in the middle of a remote star system, he’s probably going to play it safe this time and go someplace obvious.”

            “It must be nice having someplace you can run away to,” I mutter under my breath.

            “ _¿_ _Qué?_ ”

            “Oh. Uh, it must be… _agradable para correr…_ like that. All I do is… _sentarse en el techo de mi…casa_?”

            Leona nods. “You’re getting much better. Soon you might string an entire sentence together.” She turns to look out the windshield. “So you like to sit up on the roof of your house. What do you do up there?”

            “W-well, I used to like doing that when I was back on Earth, y’know. And I’d sit there and look up at the stars. It was relaxing. I-I’m not the best of students, so when I had a really bad day at school I’d wait for the sun to go down after dinner and sit up there and watch them peek out into the dark sky, one at a time. The stars didn’t care i-if I failed a math test or screwed up on the spelling quiz. They were just there, y’know, and I knew they always would be.”

            I don’t bother telling her about I’d been sitting on the rooftop stargazing when Rick showed up for the first time. It was January, so it was a freezing cold night, but I hadn’t bothered to grab a jacket or anything because I didn’t want to let anyone know I was up here. All of a sudden he materialized out of a bright green portal and was standing next to me, wavering slightly.

“Y-y-you should prolly have a jacket or something, kid. Don’t wanna get frostbite this time of year.” Those were Rick’s first-ever words to me. And they might have been my last if he hadn’t stopped me from slipping off the roof because he’d startled me so badly.

            I haven’t told Leona the real reason why I’m looking for Rick just yet; I’m still trying to feel out if that’s okay to do or not.

            “That’s beautiful, Morty,” Leona smiles at me. Tears twinkle in the corners of her eyes. “Lonely, but beautiful. Reminds me quite a bit of my husband. _Un_ _estudiante peor,_ he was, so he’d often go off by himself out of the classroom to think, chew things over in his brain.”

            “You were married?”

            “ _Sí_. Nearly twenty years in Earth time. We had a daughter together; she has a family of her own by now, I’m sure.” I hear the landing gear creak open under the ship, and that seems to shake Leona out of her sentimental mood. She pushes to her feet and clunks back toward the kitchen. “Right. We’ll need guns.”

            “Guns?! Doesn’t the king want his son alive?”

            “ _Claro_ , but a little extra firepower never hurt anyone.” She comes back with what looks like two water pistols, the glass barrels swimming with bright blue liquid. “These hold your typical tranquilizer. If we end up having to shoot Tim-Tam, one shot should knock him out for an hour, two shots if he’s feisty. This might end up being a peaceful taking, but keep it close just in case.”

            I take the pistol in shaky hands and follow her out of the ship onto the front lawn of an enormous white mansion. The grass is all neatly trimmed and bright green like on Earth, and I almost feel like I’m breaking some unspoken rule by walking across it. Leona doesn’t seem to care, though—she walk-limps across the grass like she owns the place. We march up the front steps together, pistols at our sides, and she presses the buzzer. The front door rises slowly like the gates to some great castle. Tim-Tam himself slithers into the doorway, looking supremely irritated.

            “You again?!” he squelches. His translating device is on a choker around his thick orange neck.

            “Yes, me again,” Leona says. “I—”

            “My _father_ sent you to get me, I know. Wanted posters plastered all over the galaxy, blah, blah, blah, the whole shebang. Well you can tell him to go fuck himself right in his swollen, shit-caked dorsal orifices, because I am _never_ coming home again.”

            “I’m sure he’d love to hear such moving and eloquent speech from your own mandibles.”

            “Tim-Tam?” a warm, soothing voice echoes from somewhere inside the mansion. “Who’s at the door? Is it the pizza delivery?”

            “Just a second, sweetie!” Tim-Tam calls over his shoulder before rounding on Leona. “You have got exactly ten seconds to get out of her before I have you arrested under royal Korblock authority.”

            “Arrested?” Leona laughs. “Under the royal authority you try so hard to squirm away from? I hardly think—”

            “Nope! No more! I don’t have to listen to this! Good _day_ , ma’am!” Tim-Tam presses something on an inside panel, and the door slams down on Leona’s left boot sticking in the way. I expect her to scream, swear, do _something_ , yet she just stands there with arms crossed as if nothing unusual was going on. As if she wasn’t get several bones crushed this second. What the hell!?

            “Tim-Tam, we’ve played this game before,” Leona says. “Cut the theatrics and let’s get down to business, shall we? We both know this door won’t close while I’ve got the object detection tripped.”

            “Move your foot!”

            “ _Make me._ ”

            The door wrenches open. Before Tim-Tam can make a witty reply, I fire my pistol five times right in the middle of his chest. His red eyes glaze over and roll back into his head, and he falls over with a ground-shaking thud. Leona whips around to face me.

            “What the _hell_ , Morty?” she cries.

            “He was th-threatening you!” I shout defensively. “W-what was I supposed to do, just stand here and watch you take it?”

            “Oh, _Dios mio_ …Morty, it’s a bit! A stunt! The whole thing is a set-up!”

            “What?”

            Leona sighs and shuffles over to me, pointing the end of my pistol down to the steps. “I’ve had this arrangement going for years between these two. The king pays me to go find the crown prince, and in turn the prince pays me off to not tell his father why he’s running away.”

            “O-oh. Well, how was I gonna know that? You said you’d explain later and you never did! You just got all teary-eyed talking about your ex-husband and junk.”

            Leona bristles at that. “My husband is not junk. Anyway, yes, I said I would explain earlier and I never did. _Lo siento_. I need to be more forthcoming with you about these things if I expect you to cooperate with me, right?”

            I nod ferociously.

            “I’m not going to pretend to understand the finer points of Korblock culture, but I believe the whole conflict is King Tu-Tel wants his son to take a second spouse per royal tradition, but Tim-Tam would rather not subject his boyfriend or whatever gender his lover is to potential marital favoritism. So whenever he gets pissy or horny, Tim-Tam runs off to be with his partner. _Sí_ , partner, that’s the word I’m looking for.” She toys with one of the earrings she has pierced through the top of her ear. “I know I’m prolonging the inevitable explosion of royal family drama by manipulating both of them, but it gives me an easy job, and both parties temporarily get what they want.”

            I can’t believe this. Not only is Leona a bounty hunter, but she’s, like, morally conscious of how her work affects others? If she was anything remotely like Rick before, all bets were off now.

            “There’s just one question I have,” I say. That’s a lie, I’m bursting with questions. “Why didn’t you scream when the door came down on your foot?”

            A smirk twists up Leona’s face. She puts her left hand on the doorjamb to steady herself and kicks out her left foot like one of those Rockette dancers until I hear an awful clicking noise. She then bends down and pulls her boot _and her entire leg off up to her knee what the hell?!_

            “ _This_ is what happens when you have a target that has land mines instead of a doorbell,” Leona points the boot at me. “I was lucky to get away with my other foot somewhat intact—just lost my pinky toe there.”

            “Aw geez. I-I’m sorry.”

            “No, don’t be, it’s not your fault. Besides, I’ve got a great melee weapon at my command whenever I need it.” She bends back over and snaps her calf back in place. “At least it’ll be easier hauling His Royal Fatass Highness up into the ship with two people instead of one. C’mon, let’s get him home.”

            So I help Leona tug Tim-Tam, Crown Prince of the Korblocks, up into the ship, feeling a little bit more in awe and terrified of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, plumbuses. Their true purpose shall remain a mystery to us all. 
> 
> I remember reading about personalized billboards in some kids' magazine article years ago where they were predicting all sorts of innovations they'd have in the future. We've got Internet ads that pop up based on our search history, so that's kind of the same thing. The future is here...
> 
> The vanilla sugar wafers are a reference to the snack Rick is eating in "Rixty Minutes." Morty feels nostalgic eating them. Perhaps he liked sitting on the roof, eating wafers and watching the stars during those first few months Rick was gone. Aaaaaaaand now I'm feeling sad again.
> 
> Korblock society may or may not have a royal family, but apparently they're sophisticated enough that Rick would encounter a member of their species (Blim Blam) and try to find a cure for his "space AIDS."
> 
> Also, Leona has a really strange moral compass. Who knew?


	9. Memory Lane is a Bumpy Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unity tells Summer a bit of family history, broh.

**Unity**

            How much can I say to Summer? How much should I say? My memory is vast and by all accounts flawless—hive minds generally don’t forget things—yet I don’t feel comfortable telling someone else’s story in this instance. It’s Rick’s story to tell or keep quiet, the one about his wife. If he hasn’t said anything about her before this point to Summer or Morty or anyone else, who am I to break that silence for him?

            Still, Summer _has_ been a model captive. Her first request was a shower of all things, to which I happily obliged to help her. I think it unnerved her to know that the person washing her hair in one bathroom and the person she last saw filling out paperwork in the kitchen have the same consciousness, but she’s gotten used to me since then, I think. Her only complaint was when she switched on the cable box to find we only had 6000 channels at our disposal, and only from one dimension. Apparently Rick had stolen a Time Crystal to pirate cable and give his family access to infinite channels from infinite dimensions. _So_ something he would do.

            I wonder where he is right now. Part of me felt a little twinge of jealousy that I hadn’t been the one to break him out, or at least that he hadn’t felt the need to run to my doorstep like he has so many times before. Who _did_ break him out? Why is Summer of interest to the Federation for his escape? Forgive me, but Summer and her brother don’t seem to be skilled enough to pull off something so huge. They are human teenagers, after all, easily distracted and prone to fits of self-doubt. And where did Morty disappear to in the scuffle for their capture?

            I’m working on the answer to that last question while I’m filling out Federation paperwork and hanging out in the den watching a _Jeopardy!_ marathon with Summer. The technology is still buggy at the moment, but I’ve been working on a system that will analyze a specimen’s genetic information and scan the multiverse for matches and near matches to those genes. Initially, I meant to use it as a tool for taking over entire families should they be flung far and wide across galaxies; once I located one individual from a family, I could hunt down their siblings and parents, for instance. Yet I’ve realized that I could use it to help Summer find her brother. Maybe I couldn’t find precisely where he is, but I’d at least have some coordinates to send her to. Screw the Federation—I’m not keeping her here forever. If they want Summer back for questioning, they can use their absurd wealth of resources and find her themselves.

            I’m also looking for that damn ring. I _know_ I took it with me when I left the D’gra System, and I’ve kept it in one of my many jewelry boxes, much to Beta 7’s chagrin. It’s just a question of which box it’s in.

            _“H-hey, Une, check it out! Leona got me an engagement ring!” Rick says, flashing his hand toward me. A glittering gold band is circled around the fourth finger on his left hand._

_“Do human men have engagement rings? I’m not familiar with Earth cultural practices.”_

_“Nah, women are usually the ones getting a rock ‘cause they expect men to propose, which is such bullshit. I-I don’t see why women can’t muster up the guts to get down on one knee.” Rick swipes a hand over his mouth, which is dripping with a celebratory drink. “But Leona did it. She’s not like everyone else I’ve ever met, Une. She’s got guts, cojones. I’ve never met anyone like her before.”_

_I felt a sharp pang shoot through my chest, a pang I’d later learn was called envy. “This is the end,” I say flatly. It’s meant to be a question, but there’s no point in asking if I already know the answer._

_“Yeah, duh.” Rick is always a bit more callous when he drinks, yet I don’t think he’s trying to be hurtful this time. “It’s a beginning, though, too. A beginning of us.”_

_I’m not included in the ‘us’ this time._

This is the fifth jewelry box I’ve looked through and still nothing. A hive mind like me accumulates a lot of trinkets over the years from monarchs and politicians who think they can bribe their way out of a psychological takeover. Most of the stuff is gaudy, heavy, or just plain confusing to wear, so it sits in boxes and collects dust. Of course the one thing I want would be buried among all the chains and gems I _don’t_ want to look at. I should have just kept it with me as soon as he left it on my nightstand.

            _Rick is as drunk as I’ve ever seen him, barely able to keep on his feet. Thankfully he got here through one of his portals instead of in a ship, because he most likely would have been a crashed, smoking heap on my front lawn._

_“I-i-i-it’s—hic!—over,” he sobs. “It’s the end.”_

_It’s everything I can do to catch him in my four arms_ _and half-carry him to the couch, where he flops down like a forgotten toy. He’s cried in front of me before, but never like this, with sobs and hiccups wracking his entire lanky body. Whatever he’s upset about has broken down every wall inside him, leaving him as a husk._

_“What’s over? What’s the end?!” I panic._

_“Leona.” Even in his drunken stupor, he can say her name without stuttering. His silver flask falls out of his limp hand and onto the floor, staining the carpet a pale green with its contents. “We’re done, finished. C-called the whole thing off because I’m such a fuck-up and I couldn’t keep my goddamn feet on the ground where I belong.”_

_“But you belong **here** ,” I say. “Space is your home. The amount of freedom fighting you’ve done for the galaxies, for the multiverse, is incredible! You have a legacy here, a place here.”_

_Rick sits up on rubbery arms, glaring at me through bloodshot eyes. His breath reeks of alcohol and self-loathing, which for him is more or less the same smell._

_“You don’t get it, Une,” he growls. “I have no place. I left my legacy behind on Earth. I belong nowhere.”_

Thirteenth box. I brush aside a few clunky hematite necklaces and it’s there: a gold band scratched and dulled by years of wear. The inside has an inscription in some Earth tongue that I’ve never been able to read—I think Rick said it was in Spanish? Perhaps Summer will be able to read what it says when I show her.

            _“Why’d you put it on your choker?” I ask him after a Flesh Curtains show. He’s fresh off the stage, reeking of sweat and exhilaration, his bass slung on his back. This will be the band’s last performance for a while to sort out their ‘creative differences,’ which Squanchy told me was really code for Rick wanting to spend more time with his fiancée._

_“Gets in the way of my fingering,” he replies, wiggling his unibrow to suggest he does **not** just mean fingering on his guitar_ _. “Besides, I want her close to my throat_ _. That’s where I feel all the vibrations, all the time that I pulse out into music. Even if she’s not here, I want her to feel it, too._ _”_

            I walk into the den where Summer is still parked in front of the TV, into her fifth hour of the _Jeopardy!_ marathon. Her watching partner, one of the cooks with a stained white jacket, gives up his seat on the couch for me to sit down next to her.

            “Hey,” I say, nudging her shoulder.

            “Oh hey, Unity…again. Take Potent Potables for 800, Lana, just _do it_ ,” Summer urges at the screen.

            “You said you wanted to talk about Rick and his wife?”

            “Oh, yeah, totally!” Summer scrambles for the remote and clicks the MUTE button. “Anything you can tell me, literally anything, will be helpful. I’m burning with curiosity.”

            Ah, I know that feeling well. “First, I’ve got something for you. Hold out your hand.”

            She gives me a weird look. “The last person who told me that told me to close my eyes, too, and the surprise I got was _not_ that great.”

            “I’m not coming onto you, Summer,” I roll my eyes. “Unless you want that sort of thing.”

            “I’d rather not put my mouth or my genitals anywhere near where Grandpa Rick might have had his. That’s, like, making an intergenerational sandwich, which is just _eww_.” She holds out her hand anyway, and I plop the ring into it.

            “That’s Rick’s engagement ring. I guess it’s his wedding ring, too, because I never saw him wear a different one.”

            “Whoa…” Summer picks up the ring between two fingers and holds it up to the light. “Hard to imagine him wearing anything like this. He doesn’t strike me as a sentimental guy.”

            When a hive mind laughs, it ripples through the entire consciousness, so for a few brief seconds the mansion comes alive with laughter. “You’d be surprised, Summer,” I say. “When it came to Leona, he melted into a pile of goo. This is coming from a being who has destroyed entire worlds both by accident and on purpose, but Rick would make the whole galaxy burn if that would make her smile. I’ve never seen any creature so deeply in love.”

            _He most certainly never felt that way about me,_ I think to myself before brushing the toxic thought away. This is not what Summer wants to hear.

            She rolls the ring over and over in her palm, chews the inside of her cheek. “What was she like? I don’t know everyone that Grandpa Rick ever dated, obviously, but I mean, he had _you_. And you could take any shape he wanted. You could _be_ anything he wanted. Some people would kill to have someone so flexible in their life.”

            “I think that was the problem.”

            “Huh?”

            I give Summer the warmest smile I can muster and kneel on the couch, curling my feet under my body. “You said it yourself when we first met. When we’re together too long, we turn into mirror images of each other. Like how I corrupt individuals’ minds, Rick corrupts me so much with his bad influence and partying ways that I lose myself, my identity. And as a hive mind, my personality is what defines my presence. To lose that…” I shudder. “To lose that means I may as well not exist.

            “So I think Leona was a counter to all that. She was independent, not easily swayed from her ambitions by anyone else. I can only imagine their first meeting was a disaster,” I giggle. “Rick, as wild as he was back in the day, wouldn’t have understood her. He was so _powerful_ , so persuasive. He could make anyone do anything with a few silver-tongued words. But she saw through his smoke and mirrors to the cracks in his façade. He was raw, vulnerable, looking for someone who just got him and accepted who he was.”

            Summer looks like she’s on the verge of tears, but they’ll be happy ones if they fall. “I don’t understand. Why would he leave someone like that? Mom told me he was the one who left his wife, not the other way around. Why—well, having a kid together doesn’t mean anything, if my parents are any indication, but…if you find someone like that who just _gets_ you, why let them go?”

            I shrug. “Even the strongest rock gets washed away by waves of water after so long, or so I’m given to understand. We don’t know the details. Maybe she’s the one that let go.”

            “Maybe.” Summer lifts up the ring and peers on the inside. “Wait, there’s something written here.”

            “You’ll have to tell me what it says. Rick told me a long time ago it’s in Spanish, and I’m not familiar with Earth tongues.”

            “Oh brilliant, and I’m taking French.” She squints. “ _Mi mayor tesoro…_ Yeah, sorry, Unity, I have no clue what this says. I dunno what a mayor has to do with a gas station chain.”

            “Keep the ring. I have a chain you can put it on to wear around your neck.” I’m not about to tell her about the Flesh Curtains dog collar that Rick left behind with me—I’m saving the intergalactic rock band stories for him to tell. “Now I want to talk to you about something: your brother, Morty.”

            Summer stops fiddling with the ring and meets my eyes. “What about him?”

            “You two were separated in the scuffle when you were captured by the Federation. The thing is, they didn’t manage to keep him in custody. Someone kidnapped Morty from the crowd and got him out of prison, away from federal jurisdiction.”

            “Oh my God, that is _so_ typical!” She throws up her hands. “I get the short end of the stick on this adventure, and he somehow worms his way out of trouble.”

            “If you think he’s wormed his way out of trouble, you’re sorely mistaken,” I cross my arms over my ample chest. “According to the papers I was sent, they want to re-capture and interrogate Morty for the same reasons they want you: they think you’re responsible for Rick’s escape.”

            “How could we be responsible for our grandpa escaping _before we even got to the prison_?”

            Well, that’s an odd turn of words. “Wait. You mean to tell me you had plans to break Rick out?”

            “It was all Morty’s idea!” Summer blurts. “He’s the one that spent six months filling in a notebook with sketches and plans for how to break in undetected, only we kinda fumbled the ball on the undetected part, and he’s the one that’s been the most shaken up by Rick not being around. Look, I don’t know if you picked up on this, Unity, but Rick and Morty are like best friends. I know it’s really weird, a teenage boy and an old dude, but it works somehow. They make it work. I…” She bites the inside of her cheek. “I don’t miss him all that much.”

            “If you don’t miss him, Summer, then why are you so curious about his past and who he loved? What do you plan to do with this information if he never returns to your life?” I’m genuinely curious about her answer to this. Perhaps she’s somehow planning to smuggle Rick back to Earth and reunite him with his ex-wife, pull off some grand love story nearly twenty years after the fact. For what reason, I don’t know, since Rick made it very clear that they were done, finished. Maybe this is just bull-headed teenage optimism on Summer’s part.

            _Or maybe she just wants to know. You out of anyone should be able to emphasize with how she’s feeling._

She clams up, knots her arms over her chest, and pouts. Damn, I upset her. “Anyway…I may have a way for you to find Morty,” I continue. “I’ve built a device that, with your genetic sample and minimal technical errors, should scan the multiverse for any near matches to you. That would of course include Morty, since you share 50% of your DNA as siblings.” I pause and squint at her. “You _are_ full siblings, right?”

            “Oh yeah. There’s no way Morty is anyone’s kid but Jerry’s. They’re too much alike.”

            “Fair enough. So if you could just—”

            Summer reaches up and tugs a few hairs from her scalp. “Will this work?”

            “For now. I may need a cheek swab later if this turns up no results.” I take the hairs from her, fish out the tiny plastic bag I found the ring in, and tuck them inside. “The scan will take a while to complete, even if I isolate my search to this particular universe. Rick is only a handful of beings I’m aware of that can successfully achieve trans-dimensional travel, so unless the one who took Morty somehow got a hold of Rick’s portal gun, they’ve likely stayed within this universe.”

            “O-okay.” Summer looks a little frazzled with all the information I’ve off-loaded into her teenager brain. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

            “Yes. I’m working off of a hunch here, but I suspect that the same person who broke Rick out of prison is the same one who kidnapped your brother. The relationship between Rick and Morty is well-known across the galaxies. And although _you_ may not think so, your grandpa is extremely valuable to anyone else looking to take down the Federation to further their own agenda. I’m talking about small-time planetary dictators, arms dealers, terrorists who only dream of wreaking havoc on the same scale Rick has. With his genius and creativity under their control, nothing will stop them.”

            “But what does this have to do with Morty?” Summer asks.

            “I’m not terribly familiar with Earth turns of phrase and euphemisms, but I think there’s one about a carrot and stick? It’s about punishment and reward, anyway. I assume they’d force Rick to work under threat of hurting Morty, and reward him by giving them time together.”

            “I don’t get it. What am I gonna do against an intergalactic terrorist if they’ve got my brother?”

            I sigh. “There’s no guarantee that he’s in their custody yet, Summer. It’s simply guesswork on my part. But I’d rather not make that gamble on his safety. You…well, I’m not sure what you _can_ do. If nothing else, you can protect him. I’m given to understand that’s what siblings do.” I rise from the couch and pat Summer on the shoulder. “Let’s solve one problem at a time first, okay? I’ll take this sample to the lab, see what I can do.”

            “Uh-huh,” Summer nods. She doesn’t turn the TV volume back up as I leave the den.

            I hand the sample off to a trustworthy man in a pristine white lab coat and head back to my own room. Buried at the bottom of the jewelry box where I found the ring is a photo Rick gave me of him and Leona sometime after they met. He’s wearing his typical rock star clothes of the day: low-riding black jeans, leather vest over a low-slung gray tank-top, studs and silver earrings galore, blue hair swept back like he’d either got out of a spaceship or just had sex. Leona stands next to him, reddish-brown hair teased out to enormous proportions, giant hoops in her earlobes and little studs lining the shell of her ears, a University of Miami T-shirt cut off at her brown midriff. They’re leaning into each other, but they’re almost the same height; she wouldn’t have had to crane up to kiss him like I often did. On the back it’s signed _Leona and I, June 2, 1980._

It seems like I’m just going on hunches lately, but I have this awful feeling that Leona somehow got off of Earth. I don’t know how. But the resemblance between this photo—save a few decades of wrinkles and sun exposure—and the notorious ex-Federation bounty hunter, Leona Sanchez, is uncanny. If anyone could hunt down Rick, it’d be her. Hell hath no fury like a woman abandoned, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I imagine Rick still went to visit Unity after they broke up, if only to have someone other than Squanchy and Birdperson to talk to. This is why Unity knows as much as they do about Leona.
> 
> The version of Jeopardy Summer watches is hosted by a giant floating mustache similar to Alex Trebek's mustache that he had when he first began hosting the show. I have a feeling Summer started watching Jeopardy back at home at first to try and impress Rick, but soon realized he wasn't into random trivia. She's since found that she really likes the show. It also happens to be my favorite game show.
> 
> "Mi mayor tesoro" translates to "my greatest treasure." Tesoro is a chain of gas stations near where I live, hence Summer's comment. Damn those French classes. 
> 
> Sorry if this seemed like a "talking heads" chapter; the next one will have a bit more action.
> 
> Finally, young Rick was a dirty bastard and took pride in it.


	10. Skeleton in the Closet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty's getting suspicious about things, broh.

**Morty**

            Ever since I took down Tim-Tam with the tranquilizers, Leona has been hell-bent on teaching me how to shoot a gun properly. I did manage to put five shots in Tim-Tam’s chest, but they were sprayed all over the place even though I was standing less than ten feet in front of him. In my defense, he had a really broad chest. Still, my accuracy could definitely use some work, Leona had said, as well as my form. Apparently standing with my kn-knees knocking together didn’t count as a good stance.

            “You won’t need to shoot every target on every job. Some will come quietly if they know you’ve got them cornered. Others will try to be a little feisty like Tim-Tam,” she’d said over a late dinner of peach yogurt, Oreos, and tequila one night (I had a can of Coke). “That’s where good trigger work comes in.”

            So Leona has been taking me to heavily forested planets where the trees won’t mind being grazed with a few wayward laser blasts if I happen to miss the burlap dummies she strings up for targets. She usually sits on the ground with her prosthetic leg crossed over her real one, weaving and looping piles of rainbow yarn or silk with a flashy metal hook. I learned last night what she was doing is called crocheting, _el ganchillo._

            “That’s pretty nifty you got such a giant pile of silk from spiders,” I said.

            “No, no, Morty, you misunderstand. This comes from actual _arañas gigantes_ from Mars 72. They’re like…” she stretched her hand over her head as high as it would go, “eh, at least ten feet tall at the knee. Nicest arachnids I’ve met so far, even if _la reina_ tried to eat me.”

            “Aw geez, Leona, that sounds like a lot of dangerous work just to make a vest. Why not buy one?”

            “Because _numero uno,_ this vest is for you. _Numero dos_ , all the bulletproof vests you can buy this side of the galaxy are horrendously overpriced for the narrow range of protection they offer. And _numero tres,_ when I crochet, _puse amor en las puntadas_ _._ So stop freaking out about the existence of giant spiders and focus on your target practice.”

            Today I’ve got a burlap dummy strung up at eye level. I’m supposed to practice firing one-handed while squared up to my shot, but I keep missing everywhere I aim by inches. Every time I bring my other hand up to steady myself, Leona looks over her wire-framed librarian reading glasses and clicks her tongue. Apparently I need to learn this way along with two-handed form because a target won’t always be polite enough to wait for me to get in a perfect stance (her words, not mine). Which, no duh, makes sense, but I’m so damn frustrated with my accuracy that I want to cry. I shouldn’t be pointing at the dummy’s left arm and end up firing at the branch behind it instead.

            “C-can I stop for a bit? My elbow hurts,” I say, dropping my arm to my side and flicking the safety on automatically. The blaster whirs down to a soft hum under my grip.

            “ _¿Por qué?_ ”

            “I-I-I dunno. But I just need a break. I don’t think I’m getting any better.”

            Leona looks up from her crocheting, tucks the hook behind her ear, and drops her reading glasses around her neck on a coppery chain. She grunts a bit when she stands and shifts her weight, sending a pang of guilt through my stomach. I really hate making her get up when she doesn’t have to, especially now that I know about her prosthetic.

            “Well, you’re getting better at shooting the hell out of the trees, I’ll give you that,” she remarks, putting a hand on my shoulder. “They won’t need a trim for another ten years at least.”

            I laugh shakily.

            “Let me see your form.”

            She shuffles around behind me when I raise my arm to see how I’m doing it. I’m about to flick the safety back on when she takes the blaster out of my hand, tutting.

            “No wonder your elbow hurts, _cariño_. You’re keeping it locked in place when you shoot, trying to fight the recoil. Here,” she says, turning me around with her free hand, “keep your elbow a little bent, _¿lo ves?_ That way you can shoot like this.” She takes aim and fires ten shots in a tight little circle on the dummy’s forehead.

            “B-b-but if I do that, I’m gonna hit myself in the face!”

            “No, you won’t. Your body has reflexes for a reason, to stop yourself from doing such things. Your mind is what’s tricking you—you need to not overthink it.”

            Ha, right. She hasn’t seen me fall up _and_ down the same flight of stairs in one day. My reflexes are actively trying to kill me, not keep me from doing stupid shit.

            “Here, Morty.” Leona stands right behind me and mirrors my stance. “Feet shoulder-width part. Extend your arm. Do not lock your elbow, _¿recuerdas?_ Bend it a lit— _perfecto._ ” She slips the blaster back into my palm; I flick the safety off with my thumb. “Ready. Aim.”

            I look for a spot I haven’t scorched yet with lasers and pick a spot on the upper torso, slightly to the right. I will make this shot. I _will_.

            “Fire!”

            _BRRRRRKKKKK!_ The laser crackles through the air and lands smack dab where I shot. Like Leona said, my hand didn’t snap back to hit me in the face, but rather bounced back into position once the recoil stopped.

            “Again!”

            _BRRRRRKKKKK!_ An inch away from the first one.

            “Again!”

            _BRRRRRKKKKK!_ Between the first and second shots.

            “Seven more!”

            By the time I’m done, there’s an angry red burn about the size of my fist seared into the burlap dummy’s torso. Leona claps me on the back, laughing.

            “Ay, _Dios_ , that was wonderful! _Muy bien!_ You’ll make a good marksman one day if you keep working.” She walks behind me and scoops up her half-made vest and extra balls of black silk. “Liver’s a gruesome point to shoot for on a human—lots of blood—but if you’re going for fatality, I guess that works. Go on, haul the dummy down and we’ll have Coke floats back in the ship.”

            _“She got me right in the goddamn liver, Morty! It’s the hardest-working liver in the galaxy, Morty, and now it’s got a hole in it! I hope it was worth it.”_

            The memory hits me like a semi-truck as I lower the dummy on its rope back to the ground. Wh-where the hell did that come from? All I did was pick a random place to shoot, it didn’t mean anything. Not like I was trying to live out some sick fantasy of hurting Rick o-or something like that.

            “At least Leona encourages me for doing something right, instead of tearing me down every time I make a mistake,” I mutter to the dummy as I flip it over my shoulder and walk back toward the ship. “Sh-she’s really nice like that, y’know. And she teaches me stuff. I don’t really get the whole crocheting thing, but she’s teaching me how to cook with all these alien ingredients so I don’t starve to death if I’m ever on my own. She’s got a holosax, too—kinda like a saxophone, but it makes pretty cool holograms when she plays. Sometimes the music makes me fall asleep…”

            Last night Leona brought out the holosax and played while I lay curled up in my pillow nest. My eyelids were heavy and kept fluttering; I felt bad that I couldn’t paying attention to the holograms since those are pretty much the whole point of her playing. The last thing I do remember seeing is an image of a redheaded woman and a lanky guy slow-dancing together, and I swore I heard Leona sniffle. M-maybe she was thinking about her husband, and that’s what I saw? I dunno if it’d be rude to ask her any more questions about him. She kinda seems touchy about the subject.

            I walk back up the short ramp into the ship that leads back by where I sleep. Leona’s in the kitchen: I hear the clink of an ice cream scoop against glasses and the _pff-tss!_ of her opening Coke cans. I’m pretty sure the dummy goes back here somewhere—there are so many little storage spaces onboard that I find a new one every day.

            “H-hey, Leona? Where does the dummy go?”

            “Mm?”

            There’s a pretty sizeable locker built into the wall back here, big enough for me to stand up inside and still have plenty of room to move. I drop the dummy to the floor and fiddle with the knob, spinning through the letters. _Cli-click, click, chik, clank!_ It’s broken like the cheap combination lock built into my locker at school. “Never mind! I think I found where it belongs.”

            Leona pokes her head through the doorway, ice cream scoop in hand. Her eyes fly wide open when she sees where I’m standing.

            “N-n-n-n-no, Morty! Don’t touch—”

 

**Rick**

            This is really pissing me off, this whole not seeing shit business. Everything is pitch black except for a tiny crack of light I can see if I squint down at my feet. But that tiny crack of light can’t illuminate a damn thing that’s useful around me. I do know that I can’t move more than about three inches in any direction, so I’m s-strapped down somehow. I mean, I love bondage as much as the next guy, but _hello_ , ever heard of this little thing called consent?

I can hear everything that’s going on around me, though, every clatter and bang and hum of what I assume are machines either trying to keep me alive or coaxing me closer to death. Or maybe it’s just a really shitty atmospheric stabilizer that sounds like a twenty-rat orgy inside an abandoned water heater. Anyway, the one thing I can be sure I’m hearing is voices. Actual human voices.

Morty? Morty, h-h-how the hell did you get to wherever I am? Because I fuckin’ guarantee that I didn’t make it back to Earth, so you somehow got up into space. Please don’t tell me you took a Galactic Federation shuttle—those things make the New York subways look immaculate. But knowing how much of a goody two-shoes you are, that’s exactly what you did, because you wouldn’t think to hijack a ship of your own o-or anything that I’d do. That’s why you’re better than me, Morty.

I-I bet you thought you were gonna come save me, huh? Well, the joke’s on both of us for that one. I dunno who snatched me out of prison, but I am so glad they did, Morty. S-sobriety is hell, Morty. There’s a reason I’m drinking all the time, and they wouldn’t give me a drink at all. Not even a shot. I can see you now, sitting down with some notebook, thinkin’ up some half-baked scheme to break me out ‘cause you’ve got it in your head that I’ve somehow made your life better. Look, take it from me. I haven’t made your life better. I’m not worth saving. Y-you don’t know this and you probably never will, but I turned myself over to the Federation. Your dumbass dad doesn’t have enough wherewithal to know a confetti cannon from a “space weapon,” so how the hell would he be able to call and turn me in? I only gave his name to g-get the last laugh on him, Morty. Cheap shot, but a funny one.

There’s another voice I’m hearing, and this is making me confident that I’ve truly madly deeply lost it either from extended sobriety or sensory deprivation, because there is no fucking way in hell she’s actually here.

Leona.

You know, it may actually be a good thing to be tied up in the dark if it’s really you. I’d p-probably bolt as soon as we locked eyes. And the really shitty thing about that is it’s both the first and last thing I want to do. If I wasn’t such a coward, such a piece of shit, I’d run _to_ you. I’d drop to my knees at your feet and cry, because the only dipshit I’m allergic to is me. Apologies would spill out of my mouth in a t-tangled mess of half-forgotten Spanish and English that you’d somehow understand because you just _get_ me, Leona. A-a-and those apologies would probably be useless. Let’s face it, most of the crap that comes out of my mouth is useless, which makes sense considering the source. You’d probably drop to your knees, curl those God-given legs under your body, pull me in like you did so many times, like you did on our first and last night together, and—

No. I’m not going there. I don’t deserve a kiss. I don’t deserve the time of day from you after all I’ve done. I’ll take my pain to the grave, thanks. In the m-meantime, I’ll be looking for a drink powerful enough to make me forget I’m hearing things like your voice.

The crack of light at my feet is growing brighter. It’s stretching over my legs, my stomach, my chest, my face—

 

**Morty**

            “—touch that.”

            The locker bangs open and several things in frames clatter to the floor. Leona rushes up behind me as I bend down to scoop everything up.

            “Ay, Morty, I wish you had asked me first before you started going through my things. Everything has a very specific place in my ship so I don’t lose it.”

            “Sorry.” I glance down at the first wooden frame I have stacked up in my arms. “ ‘The University of Michigan Ann Arbor c-confers upon Leona Ysabel Perez Sanchez—geez, that’s a lot of z’s in there—a Doctorate in Biomedical Engineering…’ Holy crap, you have a PhD?”

            “ _Sí_.” Leona shifts her weight from one side to the other. “Had I stayed on Earth, I would have made my living building prosthetics, like the one I have. In fact, I designed and built this one,” she kicks her left foot out, “and had an alien surgeon install it.”

            “You got your leg blown off by a land mine and had enough time to make your own prosthetic l-like some fucked-up Build-a-Bear type thing?”

            “Watch your language. And no, I didn’t just draw up plans while I was bleeding out on the front doorstep of my target’s house! _Jesus Christo_ , no, I did it after I was stabilized at the hospital. They have amazing customization options.”

            The word _customization_ brings up an unpleasant memory of cleaning out the garbage in Mom and Dad’s room and finding a catalog with, uh, several alien versions of a human penis, complete with different vibration settings and attachments sold separately. I never want to know where that came from, and I shove that thought to the back of my mind like I shoved the catalog deep into the trash.

            “W-wow,” is all I can say. I shuffle through to the other frames. Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Miami Florida. Master’s Degree in Engineering from the same school. Mom would have killed to get anywhere beyond veterinary school, and here Leona is floating through space as a bounty hunter with a PhD! “Why’d you go to Ann Arbor?”

            “My husband and I decided to move shortly after I got pregnant,” Leona shrugs. “Miami is a party city, Morty. Not a suitable place to raise a child. We needed somewhere a bit quieter.”

            “Oh. M-my mom’s from Muskegon. I-I live there, er, lived there, I guess.”

            “Really? Small world.” She looks down at the dusty frames with a sad smile. “Now put those back where they came from. The ice cream is melting.”

            Leona turns away and paces back toward the kitchen. I’m about to set the frames back in the locker when one of them falls out of my arms and clatters to the floor. I pick it up and realize this is one I didn’t look at.

            “Huh, a marriage license… ‘The State of Florida and Miami-Dade County do hereby certify on this date, August 15, 1981, the marriage of Ricardo Andreas Rodriguez Sanchez and Leona Ysabel Sanchez Perez before a court administrator’…hang on a second!”

            Sanchez _is_ a popular last name, and Rick could definitely be short for Richard or even Patrick. But oh my God, could this be…? No. There’s no way it’s him, is there?

            Something flutters out of the back of the frame—a photograph. I snatch it out of the air and flip it over. A much-younger Leona is in a short, fluffy white dress with a veil flipped back over her wavy reddish-brown hair, a trailing bouquet hanging over one arm. And the guy across from her, tall and sleek in a black tux and holding both her hands— _holy shit._ There’s no mistaking that’s Rick, even if he has more hair here than he does now. No one else has blue hair like that.

            I shove the photo in my back pocket, drop the frames in the locker and kick it shut. All thoughts of Coke floats have fled my mind, ‘cause L-Leona has a lot of explaining to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow Leona's advice and try not to freak out about the existence of ten-foot-tall spiders in the multiverse. 
> 
> Poor Morty doesn't trust himself very much. I wonder if that's self-inflicted or if Rick has made him so unsure of what he thinks and does. Might be a mix of both. 
> 
> The holosax is a shameless reference to the holophonor from Futurama. That and the Coke floats are a shout-out to my grandma, who taught me how to play the saxophone and introduced me to Coke floats. Rest in peace, Grandma. 
> 
> Rick's middle name Andreas is pulled from the fic The Hole in My Mind by RedHead537, which I wholeheartedly recommend. That fic definitely earns its Mature rating, as it has a much darker backstory for Rick than I've ever imagined for him and deals with potentially triggering themes. Read at your own ricks, but be assured that it's very well-written and thought out.


	11. Cosmic Driftwood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer goes on the road again, broh.

**Summer**

            The gold ring bounces on its chain around my neck as I work through the punches. Jab, jab, jab, right-left cross, jab, left hook, and swing-swing-swing goes the punching bag. Unity nods approvingly from its seat on the folded-up training mats in the corner, a hulking, bald blue man with rounded shoulders the size of my head. I nod back, switch stance, and start the routine over.

            It was completely my decision to train like this. Unity seemed surprised at my request, but they’ve been helping me every step of the way, giving me equipment to train with and tips on my technique. Funny, I was never an exercise junkie back home, more of a couch potato who thought walking around the outdoor outlet mall all day was a major effort. Then again, I didn’t have the chance to lift weights in a heavy-gravity chamber, or run on a treadmill while submerged in a pool up to my neck. Unity’s workouts are grueling, yet honestly _fun._

            Besides, if I’m gonna find Morty, I have no clue who’s got him. I’m not about to run back to Earth and join an MMA club or anything, but I feel like I could kick someone’s ass empty-handed if they were roughly my size. Anything bigger than me and, I dunno, maybe I could use a weapon for advantage. I know how to make a mean wooden stake.

            My ponytail is drenched with sweat and flapping wetly against my neck. I pause and swipe the back of my hand against my forehead, reach down for my sports drink bottle. Unity glances up from the tablet they’ve been playing on.

            “Very nice, Summer. Your footwork is improving,” they grunt, “although your punching patterns are still a little too predictable. Need to change it up a bit.”

            “Those are the patterns _you_ taught me.”

            “True.” Unity peers back down at their tablet and scrolls through the screen. I walk over and plop down next to them, sports bottle in my still-gloved hand. “Looks like they’re making considerable progress in the search for your brother down in the lab. I think the dimensional scan is nearly complete.”

            “Wait, hang on. Wouldn’t you already know that since you’re, y’know, the same mind?”

            “Pardon me?”

            “Like, what’s the point of one of you texting another person something if you both share the same knowledge of that thing? You both _know_ it at the exact moment you discover it because you’ve got the same consciousness, so why do you need to do it?”

            If you can still call it blushing when someone with blue skin turns even darker blue on their cheeks, that’s what Unity did. “Um, well…why do you need to have a blog?” they blurt.

            “You’ve been reading my _blog_?”

            “Not so much reading as getting down a few lines and having my eyes glaze over. Summer, I mean no offense, but your blog has as much brain fodder as Quoltean reality TV, which is to say not very much at all.”

            “Sorry it doesn’t read like a manuscript of NPR,” I say flatly.

            Unity blinks at me owlishly. “I’ll assume you made some kind of joke that only makes sense in Earth’s cultural context and offer you a sympathetic chuckle.” Polite laughter ripples through the whole mansion in waves, and damn, does that creep me out. “Besides, I hope you realize your paid blog was just a means for the Galactic Federation to keep tabs on you and your family.”

            Well, I do _now._

            “Your lack of expression articulates volumes.” Unity rises from the mats and tucks the tablet under their arm. “The Federation confiscated the cellular device you had at the time they captured you, according to the paperwork they sent me. You weren’t writing any new posts and saving them on the device after you embarked on your trip with Morty, were you?”

            “No. I’m not _that_ stupid.”

            “Good. That means the Federation, should they feel the need to drag you in again for questioning, would be doing so under false pretenses. They can’t hold you twice under the same suspicion.” Unity smiles down at me. “Go clean up and meet me down in the lab as soon as you’re done. We need to plan your departure.”

            No one needs to tell me twice to get clean. I gladly jog toward the showers and spend a healthy amount of time scrubbing every bit of grime and sweat off my body. While I shampoo and lather my hair with one hand, I toy with the ring on its chain with the other hand, rubbing my thumb over the inscription. _Mi mayor tesoro, mi mayor tesoro._ It sounds like a spell when I chant it under my breath, even though I know it’s nothing more mystical than Spanish. Does Grandpa Rick know Spanish? His last name _is_ Sanchez, and so is Mom’s, but I’ve never heard him ever speak anything other than English. Did he and his wife speak Spanish to each other like some secret love language, and he was so devastated by their break-up that he vowed never to utter another word in Spanish again? Oh, I know Grandpa was the one that left his wife, but that would be so romantic!

            Maybe when I find Morty, he’ll be able to tell me what it says. I know for sure he takes Spanish: that’s the one grade Dad never complains about when he sees Morty’s progress reports. But that requires my finding him first. I towel myself off, tug on the clothes Unity left for me—yellow tank top and gray crop pants, seriously cute—and make my way upstairs.

            The lab is packed with at least sixty other people once I push through the entryway. Some are clustered around what look like the chemistry stations we have back at school, flicking at vibrantly colored test tubes. Others are running around in grubby blue mechanic’s jumpsuits, wiping their hands on oily rags and sipping on sodas from vending machines, wrenches and other gadgets bulging out of their pockets. Still others are lined up at banks of computers like this is NASA mission control, peering at flickering screens that’d look more at home back in the 1980s and chattering on headsets. And to think, all of these people are sharing the same mind. It gives me a headache just thinking about it. I rub at my temple just as Power Suit Unity comes trotting up to me.

            “Oh Summer, you’re here. Good. I just want to run through the details of your journey as I have it planned out so far.” She whistles down a row of computers. “Excuse me, Dmitri? Could you pull up the search results we have for Morty Smith?”

            A nerdy-looking guy with dreadlocks nods curtly and projects an image of some section of the universe onto the big screen in front of everyone. The image is littered with tiny pinpricks of stars and swirling galaxies, but there’s a bright green crosshairs off to the left that grabs my attention.

            “We did a biometric scan for any individual sharing at least 50% of your DNA within our entire range, which I must say is _pretty_ wide,” Unity says. “Our scanners miss, what, 10% of the potential scanning range due to EM interference?”

            “Closer to 12.5%,” Dmitri answers.

            “Right, 12.5%. In any case, we found the closest genetic match possible in the areas we could look at. Morty is located at those coordinates we have marked on the image you see, give or take about 10 light-minutes.”

            “Uh,” I say, kinda overwhelmed by this load of information. “Is that a big margin?”

            “It’s about the distance from Earth to the planet you call Mars at a particular point in their respective orbits.” Unity turns to me with a smile. “Don’t fret, it’s really not that far.”

            “Unity, no human has ever made to Mars from Earth! Not yet, anyway.”

            “That’s because you humans lack the cooperation necessary to develop the technology that would lead you to such a great voyage,” Dmitri sasses. “Now, if you had a hive mind controlling you—”

            “That’s _enough_ , Dmitri,” Unity snaps. Dmitri immediately shuts up and spins in his chair toward the nearest computer screen as if yanked along on puppet strings, and I’m reminded to never, ever piss off Unity or any other hive mind if I can help it.

            “Terribly sorry about that,” Unity continues. “Like any consciousness, I have dark, irksome little voices that like to pop up every once in a while and run counter to the rest of me. I think Rick called it something like the devil on your shoulder. Those voices just need to be addressed and dismissed every so often.”

            “You mean like invasive thoughts that happen when you’re meditating?” I ask.

            “Precisely. Now, where was I? Oh yes, Morty—he’s located in those crosshairs, 10 light-minute differential. I built you a ship that’s preset to those coordinates, so all you need to do is worry about riding and enjoying the view.”

            “Whoa. You built me my own ship?”

            “Mm-hm! You wanna go see it?” Unity is practically jumping out of her high heels with excitement. “Come on, let’s go!”

            She grabs my hand and drags me toward the double doors where all the mechanics are hanging out. They part out of the way for us, and then I think about how it’s Unity making way for herself to walk through…herself, and the headache comes throbbing back again. I do my best to stop thinking about that. Turns out to pretty easy, because my jaw practically hits the floor when I see the ship. It’s nothing short of _gorgeous._

            The entire outside is painted a deep blue, bordering on black, with tiny metallic sparkles winking from every angle. Purple stripes, three of them, race down from the slim nose of the ship to the tail, and the back fins and wing tips are the same color. The windshield is lightly tinted gray and pristine. I almost don’t want to step inside for fear that it’s even better, and I don’t want to cry and have Unity start freaking out that I’m leaking saline or something.

            “Y-you like it, don’t you?” Unity stands next to me, wringing her hands and searching my face for a reaction. “I’ve worked very hard to make it not only efficient for your trip, but also comfortable for y—”

            I cut Unity off with a tight hug. It takes a while for her to get her bearings, but she gets the idea after a few seconds and wraps her arms around me, too. I swear I hear a collective sigh of relief shake through not only the mansion, but the planet as a whole.

            “I…Unity, this is beyond words. I’m serious, this is _amazing_ ,” I whisper. “Not just the ship and finding Morty for me, although that’s an important part of it. I mean the keeping me here as a guest and not some kind of nasty prisoner like I’m sure the Federation wanted you to do.” I pull back from the hug and put my hands on her padded shoulders. “You’re gonna get in trouble for doing all this. That’s not even a question at this point.”

            Unity simply shrugs. “Let them come for me. On a scale of beings that are easy to assimilate, Gromflomites would be down around the easiest. They don’t have enough brainpower to rebel for terribly long, and it’d be an entry point to the rest of the Galactic Federation. From there, the universe is my oyster, as Rick would say.”

            She glances down at a series of watches strapped to her pale blue wrist. “Ooh, we need to get you on board ASAP. Our calculated trajectory will only be accurate for two more minutes before we’ll need to recalibrate. There’s a space suit that should fit you appropriately on board, so _go, go, go_!”

            I take Unity at her word and scramble up the ladder that leads into the ship. Sure enough, there’s a bodysuit made of silky gray material draped over the lone seat in the cockpit with silver cuffs at the wrists and ankles. I make sure the door is shut behind me before I change, toss my old clothes in the corner, and settle down in the seat.

            “T-minus one minute to launch. Mission control to _Desperado_ , all systems functional?”

            I stare around the massive dashboard and see no blinking lights or anything majorly concerning. “Um, no, Mission Control, everything looks fine. Did you just call me Desperado?”

            “Oh yeah! Forgot to tell you that’s the name of your ship,” Power Suit Unity says through the PA. “I hope you don’t mind that I named it for you.”

            “No, no, that’s cool. Better than what I would have picked.”

            “T-minus thirty seconds to launch. Anything else I can get you?”

            “Nothing else I can think of.” I drum my fingers on the arm of the seat anxiously. It’s finally hitting me that I’ll be seeing Morty, like, really soon. There’s no telling what condition he’ll be in once I find him, or what kind of trouble he might have gotten himself into. I’d like to think that all his adventures with Rick might have taught him at least a few intergalactic survival strategies.

            “T-minus ten seconds to launch. Nine, eight, seven, six…”

            The massive hangar doors in front of me swing wide open. I stretch all the safety harnesses I can find over my body and click them into place.

            “Five, four, three, two, one. Go, we have go!”

            A blinding white light swallows me and the entire ship. My eyes squeeze shut, and when I open them again, I’m floating out in the inky blackness of space among the stars.

            “Whoa…” I say. “Hey, wait a minute. _Desperado_ to Mission Control, you mind telling me what the hell that was?”

            “Mission Control to _Desperado_ , that was the initial hyperdrive launch boosted by a proprietary blend of intergalactic substances which I can only describe as ‘Kaboom Fuel’. Basically, it was a hyper-hyperdrive launch.” Power Suit Unity giggles, and for the first time in ages I only hear and feel one voice giggling. “In any case, you’re about a quarter of your way to your destination, so you’re welcome.”

            “Wow. Thanks, Un—OH MY GOD!” I scream. Right the fuck out of nowhere, a giant mess of tentacles has seized the bow of the ship and latched right on.

            “Mission Control to _Desperado_ , do you have a problem?”

            “DOES IT SOUND LIKE I HAVE A PROBLEM?!” A ferocious-looking beak is pecking the hell out of the windshield and growling like a large and extremely pissed-off grizzly bear. I’ve peed my pants, but at least I’m strapped into relative safety. “YEAH, SURE, I HAVE A BIT OF A PROBLEM. MORE LIKE A CATASTROPHE, BUT WHATEVER.”

            “Mission Control to _Desperado,_ what seems to be the problem?”

            “AIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!” I don’t know what possesses me to do it, but I start flailing my arms at the windshield. Blasts of red plasma start flying out from my wrists toward the windshield and seem to…bleed out of the glass? What the actual hell is going on?

            I hear a sound like scraping claws against the sides of the ship, plus a flapping noise somewhere above my head like a huge umbrella opening and closing. Some leftover red plasma slips into the beak, which snaps shut and slowly pulls back along with so many popping tentacles. It’s not until I see a giant scarlet eye the size of a beach ball glaring at me that I get what has been attacking me.

            “ _Cthulhu_ ,” I whisper.

            “Mission Control to _Desperado_ , can you—kkrk!—repeat? Commlink has—kkrk!---damaged.”

            “Unity, I just got attacked by Cthulhu.”

            “You were attacked by—kkrk!—Great Old Ones? Are you serious?”

            “Well, I should _think_ I’d know what the hell Cthulhu looks like, considering I had to steal its baby once!”

            “…you want to run—kkrk!—by me again?”

            I rub my temple for the third time today, exhausted. That damn giant scarlet eye is still staring at me through the windshield. “Grandpa Rick wanted to see if we could steal a god’s baby. I don’t think he even wanted it for experimentation or anything, just to do it for kicks. And we ended up on this horrifyingly long chase for our lives through space, Grandpa Rick, Morty, and I, and of course they made me hold the baby. We did make it home in one piece, thank God, but I think the baby escaped or Grandpa Rick took it back in the middle of the night or something, because I never saw it again.

            “YOU HEAR THAT?” I yell toward the windshield. “I DON’T HAVE YOUR BABY ANYMORE, SO LEAVE ME ALONE!”

            A major grunt shakes the entire ship. I have no idea if Cthulhu understood English, but maybe it understood my rage and annoyance combined with flinging red plasma. It pulled away from the ship and flapped off into the distance, leaving me drifting alone through space.

            “Mission—kkrk!—to _Desperado_ , do you copy?”

            I sigh. “ _Desperado_ to Mission Control. I copy. All systems appear functional, I just peed myself.”

            “The environmental system onboard detected that almost as soon as you did it,” Unity says, and I flush pink. “So I know. Always wanted to—kkrk!—Old Ones. They are my ancestors, you know. All hive minds can claim to be descendent from the Great Old Ones like Cthulhu. I—kkrk!—to be like one someday.”

            “Maybe you will,” I murmur half to myself.

            “That would—kkrk!—dream. Summer, I fear the commlink has sustained too much damage, so the ship AI will take over supervision and piloting from here. But before I go, I want to let you know two things.”

            I raise an eyebrow. “Like?”

            “In the eventuality that I make it to Earth and begin assimilation, you have my eternal vow that I will preserve your individuality. You will not become part of me, but rather remain yourself.”

            Whoa. That was huge; the only other person I know of that Unity didn’t take was Grandpa Rick. “Th-thank you, Unity. W-what was the second thing?”

            “Simply this: take care of yourself, Summer.”

And with that, the line clicks over to nothingness.

            I sit strapped to my seat, dumbfounded for a moment or two. Eventually I reach over and turn down the speaker volume so the static is muted, and I speak to the ceiling.

            “Ship? How close are we to our destination?”

            “ _Recalibrating coordinates…approximate distance is 150 light-years from our current position_ ,” a cool female voice that sounds so achingly not like Unity tells me.

            “Is that long enough for a nap?”

            “ _Based on my rudimentary knowledge of the human body, I calculate that the voyage is equal to about forty human naps._ ”

            “I could use about thirty of them now.” I kinda feel like crying, kinda feel like eating something, but mostly just feel wrung out. I curl up as best I can in my restraints and lie on my side. “Hey, ship? One more thing.”

            “ _Yes, Summer?_ ”

            “You don’t happen to have an attitude problem, do you?”

            “ _I do not know about this attitude of which you speak._ ”

            “Good,” I say, closing my eyes, “’cause I do not want to deal with that again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Badass Summer is trying to become even more of a badass by training. I wonder if she has "X Gon' Give it to Ya" by DMX blasting in the background while she works out. 
> 
> Since Earth became part of the Federation, aliens have been absolutely transfixed by this human invention known as the Internet. Not only are ex-cons hanging out on Reddit threads for Morty to meet, but they can also read blogs like Summer's! Hey, you didn't think I forgot about that plot point, did you?
> 
> Unity has discovered that the difficulty of assimilating a specific being is directly proportional to how intelligent that being is, with more intelligent beings having a greater ability to fight back. Unity implies, then, that the Gromflomites are pretty much a cakewalk for assimilation, but they just haven't met any of the bugs yet. 
> 
> Chapter title and Summer's new ship's name is taken from a fanfic I read a long time ago from a long-since-abandoned fandom. It's called The Other Side of Tomorrow, and although it's written in script format (a style that I understand has since been shunned by the fanfic community at large), it's still an absolutely fantastic story. Summer throwing plasma is also based on an ability the main character of that fic had. Hmm, I wonder if/how Summer will learn to wrangle her power? 
> 
> Finally, this is the last time we'll see Unity in the story. They had a great arc, and I really hope we get to see them again sometime in the show. We can only hope, right?


	12. Breakfast on Blood Ridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty finds some history and breaks down some inner walls, broh.
> 
> If blood makes your uncomfortable, this is your heads-up now.

**Morty**

            Leona shakes me awake from where I drifted off in the co-pilot’s seat after dinner. I wonder how her hands, flexing with vein and muscle like they are, manage to stay so warm and soft. All it takes is a gentle touch on my shoulder to know who it is.

            “ _Despierta,_ Morty,” she says. “ _Es hora del desayuno._ ”

            “ _¿Q-Qué?_ ” I stutter.

            “Time to get up.”

            “ _Sí, sí, yo te entendí._ _Dios mío_ ,” I yawn as I stretch my arms way above my head. I take a whiff of my armpit and gag at the smell; I really need a shower, but changing clothes and rubbing on deodorant is gonna have to be enough. We only have a limited water supply that the ship recycles from our waste, and I dunno, I still kinda gag at the thought of showering with what used to be my own pee.

            “Oh, we’re getting _descarado_ now, are we? Perhaps my Spanish lessons are working too well.” Leona gazes out of the windshield before getting up out of her chair and walking toward the back of the ship. “You’re getting much better, Morty. Correct verb tenses and everything.”

            “Th-thanks.” I’ve been having dreams when I’m asleep of speaking in perfect Spanish, even though my tongue gets twisted up from time to time when I’m awake. It’s nice to hear the encouragement, even if it’s from a woman who’s looking shadier to me every day. Behind the kind smiles and occasional sharp jokes is someone who keeps a lot hidden away just under the surface. At first I told myself off, thinking _what right do you have to demand anything from her?_ _You’re just a kid._ But then I thought about all the stuff Leona knows about me, how much she’s managed to worm out of me without revealing much of herself. It’s reminding me of Rick all over again, just when I started to think the two of them were different.

            And they were married _._ Not dating, not just seeing each other to screw on the weekends or anything, but _married_ like committed to one another. I mean, I’ve been on adventures where Rick flirts with every vaguely attractive creature he sees—well, maybe they’re attractive to him, I don’t really see it—so it’s so bizarre to imagine him, I dunno, settled down with someone. He puts Mom and Dad down all the time for their failing marriage and how they should get a divorce if they can’t work their shit out. And wasn’t he the one that told me marriage is a joke anyway? _What people call “love” is just a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed. It hits hard, Morty, then it slowly fades, leaving you stranded in a failing marriage. I did it. Your parents are going to do it. Break the cycle, Morty._

            It shouldn’t surprise me that Rick is a big liar, really, yet it feels like a gut punch. Everything I ever knew about his past, which admittedly wasn’t that much, has been flipped on its head, leaving me with nothing more than a new set of questions. Why did his marriage to Leona fail? Did they really fall out of love with each other? Because it doesn’t make sense for Leona to keep all this shit in her locker if she, I dunno, didn’t have some kind of feelings left over for him. Mom said Rick was the one that left—why?

            Perhaps the biggest question of all is this one: is Leona my grandma? It’s entirely possible that Rick could have married Leona and knocked someone else up with my mom, but that doesn’t strike me as right. Still, it doesn’t make sense for Mom to complain about her mom being boring and unremarkable if Leona actually _is_ her mom. Because honestly, Leona is a _badass._ How could anyone possibly call an intergalactic bounty hunter unremarkable? And now that I think about it, she’s totally the kind of person R-Rick would marry if he made the choice.

            There’s too many questions and h-hypotheticals floating around in my head, and I’m afraid I’m gonna explode if I don’t completely wake up and keep my tongue under control. The marriage photo still burns in my back pocket along with my curiosity, but I steer my mind away from that. Instead I look out the windshield at the giant, leafy green planet we’re floating by.

            “H-hey, Leona?” I ask. “What planet is this?”

            “Mm?” She comes back to her seat with a cup of steaming hot coffee in her hands. “Oh, this is Glapflap. One of the largest rainforest planets in the charted universe. The humidity there is so intense that only carefully planned manned expeditions or specially designed rovers can tolerate being on the surface for more than five minutes. It’s a biologically fascinating place, really.”

            “And w-we’re gonna go down there?”

            “ _Dios_ , no. We’ll be touching down on one of its moons, which are far more hospitable. Moon 3, to be specific.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “I guess they used up all their creativity in naming the planet and didn’t bother giving the moons anything more than numbers for names.”

            My stomach suddenly rumbles loudly. “Uh, you did say something about breakfast before, right?”

            “ _Sí, claro_. I thought we’d cook out in the open air for a change of pace. How do you feel about eggs?”

            Eggs are one of my favorite things that Mom cooks back home. “Y-yeah, that sounds great.”

            “Wonderful. It’ll take me some time to set up the camp stove and adjust for the new atmosphere, so feel free to look around while I do that. Moon 3 is a bit of a historical site, I’m given to understand.”

            “Cool.” I’ve never particularly liked going to museums or anything, but those were back on Earth where the same history lessons were beat into our skulls year after year. Maybe this place will be more interesting to poke around in.

            The ship touches down on the surface with a soft _thunk!_ , and I scramble up to help Leona heft her camp stove outside. She tells me to go ahead and explore but not stray too far since the eggs and Shlox bacon will be ready soon. I grab one of those oxygen backpacks we picked up on Epsilon 6, slip it on, and head out by myself.

            Moon 3 looks an awful lot like those fuzzy photos of Mars that I’ve seen in science class. The ground is mostly rusty red dust with rocks of various sizes scattered across the surface. There are small slopes and steep hills that extend out into narrow cliffs. I’m working my way along one of those narrow cliffs, a ridge that overlooks a rocky valley. If I squint, I can make out a giant column of red rock in the distance rising toward the sky, kinda like Devils Tower I saw on one of our road trips back home. No trees or water or anything familiar out here—it looks like a barren, lonely sort of place, yet pretty. Makes me wish I’d thought to grab a bottle of water, even if it was my recycled pee, before I’d left the ship.

            I walk until the ship is a faint silver speck on the horizon. There’s no wind, so I should be able to follow my footprints back once I need to turn around. I look behind me to check that my path is solid, then look ahead to the ground right in front of me where the ground is covered with deep purple splotches.

            Wait. Purple?

            I keep walking along, making notes of where the purple patches are. Some are just tiny speckles that sprayed out in little groups; others are massive dried puddles with uneven edges where a body must have laid. Every step I take manages to touch one of those splotches. I look up from the ground to see a massive building—well, half of a massive building. It’s hard to tell whether it’s falling down because of age or because it looks like it was shot to hell by blasters. Burn marks are flung across the outside walls and even up into the spindly white turret atop the building. And the purple splotches continue right up to the gaping doorway and up onto the peeling white walls, where it suddenly turns to navy blue.

            A memory suddenly rushes to the front of my mind: cradling a gun in my hands, shooting at a Gromflomite while Rick is typing in the portal coordinates to get home. _Glenn’s bleeding to death! Someone call his wife and children!_ Panic welling in my chest as I watch Glenn spray dark blue blood everywhere as he’s dying. Rick yelling at me that they’re bureaucrats and he doesn’t respect them, a-as if that’s some j-justification that makes what I’m doing okay.

            Another memory: me standing in front of an alien tiki bar next to Rick, wearing a slick new tuxedo. Rick is staring at me with his head propped up on one fist, clearly annoyed by my telling him this wedding is Birdperson’s big day. He groans, sits up, and says _Birdperson’s big day was at Blood Ridge on Glapflap’s third moon against the Gromflomites._

_Blood Ridge on Glapflap’s third moon. Third moon, Moon 3, Glapflap._

_Red and blue make purple. Blood Ridge._

_This is all blood._

            I can’t help it—I drop to my knees and vomit. The blood must be old, at least older than me, but there’s enough of it that it’s permanently stained the ground all over here. There must have been hundreds, no, thousands of Gromflomites to make that happen. I imagine Birdperson perched high up in the tower, fewer gray feathers than he had when I first met him, screeching and clawing at any bug that came near. Squanchy was hulked out like he was at the wedding, taking out twenty bugs with one swipe of his paw. And in the middle of it all was Rick, skinny arms holding up a massive intergalactic AK-47, insane laughter ricocheting like phaser beams every time he mowed down a swath of enemies. I can see it all play out in my head like I’ve seen it before on some grainy, fucked-up home video.

            I wipe the back of my shaking hand over my mouth and stand up, knees knocking. As g-g-gross or horrifying as it might be, I have to go look inside this building to see what else is there. Not sure what I hope to find, but I don’t know what else I’ll gain by staying out here.

            My footsteps echo on the cool cement when I step inside. There’s no light save for what filters in from outside through the gaping holes in the walls. Blood is still seeped into the floor, but not nearly as much as what I saw outside. Sagging support beams struggle to hold up the second floor, which has just as many holes in it as the walls. The wooden stairs leading up to the second floor are shot to hell, the railing snapped and burned in several places. Right next to one of a splintered wooden column is a small round object glinting back in the sunlight. Cautiously, I tiptoe over to it. If it was a bomb or alien grenade of some kind, it would have detonated years ago and blown this whole place to bits, right? When nudging it with my foot doesn’t set it off, I pick it up and click the tiny button on the side.

            “ _Shit, is this thing on? Is this on? Pers, you told me this thing would work, I hope you were right or I’m gonna kick your ass even worse than Bug Squadron Theta did. That’s right, I saw it happen._ ”

            There’s no denying it: that’s Rick talking! A much younger Rick, from the sounds of things; he sounds more drunk on happiness than liquor, and the gravelly edge to his voice isn’t as harsh as it is—was—now.

            “ _Okay, this thing is on. Good. Star date 264-dash-35—Squanchy, I swear to God if you don’t get over there and stop Pers’ bleeding, I will squanch the ever-loving hell out of you!_ ”

            “ _We don’t have any squanchin’ bandages, you psycho bag of squanch!_ ” I hear Squanchy yell in the background.

            “ _Use my shirt, then! Geez!_ ” I hear rustling for a few seconds, which must be young Rick taking his shirt off. “ _No more interruptions! I’m trying to record this for posterity._ ”

            “ _A noble endeavor—ack!—to undertake, Rick_ ,” Birdperson says. He sounds faint, like he’s losing a lot of blood all at once. “ _Indeed, this victory should be more than a footnote in the annals of history._ ”

            “ _Yeah, well, I need quiet to make this happen, so keep it down_ ,” Rick growls. “ _Anyway. Star date 264-dash-35-sigma-72. Location: Virgo Cluster, Moon 3 of Glapflap. Let it be known to those who find this device in some far-off tomorrow that on this date, three members of the insurgency against the Galactic Federation successfully attacked and captured a Gromflomite base here on Moon 3 of Glapflap. It was a bloody battle, not without its injuries—”_

            “ _Speak for your squanchin’ self!_ ” Squanchy interjects.

            “ _—but overall, it was a victory. A decisive victory that shows we are not some pissy little complainers from the far-flung corners of the universe, but warriors with an interest in winning and maintaining the freedoms and rights owed to all beings on all planets. This includes the freedom from rule by an oppressive intergalactic government whose interest in protecting its people comes second to its own protection._ ”

            “ _Hear, hear!_ ” Squanchy and Birdperson cheer.

            “ _So, uh, yeah. Let these names ring on in infamy. Birdperson, the Fourth of His Name, from Birdworld. Squanchy, second-in-command of the Tiktok Clan_ _and the Thirty-Seventh of His Name. And me, Ricardo Andreas Rodriguez Sanchez. I think I’m the first of my name, but that really doesn’t matter because I’m from Earth and we don’t count that sort of thing. Um…that’s all I’ve got to say. May this record stand as a testament for what we’ve done here, and may our fight pave the way for a better tomorrow. End transmission._ ”

            The voice dies away into the dusty air, and tears well in my eyes. Rick always pretends to not care. He’s got that n-n-nonchalant attitude about everything on our adventures together, but it’s all an act. At one point in his life he cared not only about himself, but about the fate of every creature in the universe. He was willing to fight a force that he thought was wrong, that was o-oppressive and clearly hurting people. I don’t know what the Federation is doing to Summer right now, but it can’t be anything good. I have to believe Rick knew something that I don’t about the Federation. I have to believe he cares because…because…

            Because I care about him. And I think he cares about me.

            I hear footsteps pound against the concrete behind me. “Morty!” Leona pants, clearly out of breath. “ _Cariño_ , I told you not to go very far away! The eggs almost bur—you’re crying.”

            She doesn’t ask me if I’m crying like Mom would, just states it like a simple, irrefutable fact. For some reason, this makes me burst into a new batch of tears and clutch the little round speaker in my hand tightly. She says nothing, only puts an arm around me and guides me out into the sunlight. We walk back to the ship in silence, and I wish there was at least a little wind on this planet that would drown out the ugly sounds of me crying.

            There’s a big black frying pan full of fried eggs and tortillas sitting on the camp stove when we get back, and a pot of _café con leche_ is brewing on what looks like a bigger Bunsen burner. She hands me a plate and fork, asks me if I’d like salsa and avocado wedges, then sits down in her weird cross-legged way on the dusty earth. I follow suit.

            “What has you so upset?” she asks after I’ve wolfed down my third tortilla and egg.

            I decide to let what I’ve found speak for itself, so I press the button on the speaker again and let the recording play out for her. Leona’s eyes widen a few times throughout, particularly during Rick’s final long speech, but other than that her face doesn’t change at all. She takes a sip of her coffee once the speaker goes quiet.

            “Ah, so you found a piece of history. The Battle of Blood Ridge was a major loss for the Federation against the insurgents—I think something like 1500 Gromflomites lost their lives here. Rick Sanchez marked his name in galactic history that day if he didn’t already do so.”

            “He’s my grandpa.”

            Leona, who had been taking a bite of her _huevos rancheros_ , set her fork down on her plate, food still dangling off the tines. _“¿_ _Perdóname?_ ”

            “Rick Sanchez is my grandpa. That’s why I was in Gloppydrop Penitentiary that day when you found me.” It’s like a dam has burst in my chest and the water’s gushing out of my mouth. “I-I know he’s a wanted criminal, and I don’t really know how l-long his rap sheet is, although I’m guessing it’s pretty long, but what you need to know is I…I need him, Leona. He’s the only friend, the best friend that I have in the universe. I know that’s kinda messed up, for a teenager’s best friend to be someone not his own age, but _I’m_ kinda messed up, and R-R-Rick is r-really messed up, so it all works out in the end.” I let out a nervous laugh. “So I’m looking for him. I don’t know where he is, and I don’t know if you’ll want to help me look. I-i-if you want to part ways now, I’ll understand. I don’t know how I’ll get around, m-maybe I’ll hitchhike—”

            “Morty, _basta_ ,” Leona holds up her hand. “You know how I care about family, no? You’ve seen my relationship with Tim-Tam and his father, how I try to keep them both happy with their arrangements. In my line of work, I see so many families brought together and torn apart. Sometimes I do the tearing, sometimes the repairing. All depends on what the client asks for.” She takes a breath and continues. “I _know_ how important it is to be with your loved ones. It breaks my heart every day that I couldn’t save your sister as well as you, because it’s far better to be together in this cold, lonely universe than it is to be by yourself. If finding and reuniting you with your will make you happier, then I will help you on that mission.”

            “Y-you will?!”

            “ _Claro que sí._ I’ll forfeit the reward that rests on Rick Sanchez’s head to bring you back together. You have my word.”

            I can’t help it—I leap from where I’m sitting and tackle Leona in a hug. “Oh my God, thank you, thank you! _Gracias, gracias, mil veces, gracias!_ ”

            “ _De nada_ , Morty,” she says, rubbing her free hand along my back. “Now go ahead and finish your breakfast. The eggs get rubbery when they’re cold.”

            I scramble off of her and grab my plate again, scarfing down the rest of my meal as messily as possible. Fried eggs had never tasted so good in all my life, and these were even better than Mom’s.

 

**Leona**

            He’s even more valuable than I thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of Rick and his friends fighting the Federation just sounds so completely badass, and it's something I hope they'll explore in Season 3 a little bit. I wanted Morty to learn a little more about his grandpa; I also just really wanted to write some banter between Rick, Squanchy, and Birdperson. 
> 
> I get the idea that Jerry is the kind of dad that thinks family road trips are a great way to diffuse tension, not realizing that forcing several people who are on bad terms with one another to share cramped quarters in the middle of nowhere is not an effective stress release. That's why Morty knows what Devils Tower is. 
> 
> Speaking of Jerry, I'd debated before beginning this story whether to include a subplot of Beth coming home to find the backyard a wreck and Jerry having no clue what was going on. This subplot was scrapped, largely because it felt unnecessary and because I also felt I couldn't do Jerry or Beth justice in a first person POV. 
> 
> Also forgot to mention this: Rick's first last name, Rodriguez, is a nod to Bender from Futurama, whose last name is also Rodriguez. I like to think those two alcoholic bros would love to party together.
> 
> And oh shit. What's Leona up to now?


	13. Missed Connection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick finally puts the puzzle together, broh.
> 
> CW: body horror, elements of torture

**Rick**

            That creepy little fucker is staring at me again when I wake up. It’d be decidedly less creepy if he would look at me with more than one eye, but the other is covered in a dumb eyepatch that looks like he swiped it from the clearance rack at Party City. And if I weren’t naked and floating in a vertical glass tank of saline like a graying, wrinkled goldfish. And maybe if he blinked more often.

            Since he refuses to break eye contact, I’m the one who breaks it and decides to take in my surroundings. Looks like he’s got me in some kind of laboratory, much cleaner than any workspace I’ve ever used. I’ve always been more of an oil-and-grease, work-on-the-fly kind of scientist; here, I can smell the bleach practically leeching through the glass. Every bit of chrome has been polished, every antiseptic white counter wiped down so it gleams. I doubt anyone’s ever sat on the blue vinyl cushion on the exam table and made a dent in it with their butt. W-w-what the fuck does this kid plan on doing with me this time?

            He stands up and blinks hard at me. The saline around me starts to drain down rapidly to my feet, leaving me to flail for the bottom of the tank so I don’t fall on my ass. The curved glass retracts away to one side and exposes me to the open air— _fuck_ , it’s cold. I rip out the cannula that’s been itching my nostrils for what feels like weeks and stretch. Confinement ain’t good for an old body like mine.

            “On the table, please,” he says in his high, chilly voice. He tosses a crinkly blue dressing gown at me, which is somehow colder than the lab. I roll my eyes and tug it on anyway, though. I’ve learned that I’ve gotta play his little game, fulfill his little power trip so he’ll open up and start talking. Hasn’t worked the greatest thus far, m-mostly because I inevitably open my mouth and start lipping off, but I’ve got a feeling he’ll come around today. He’s a Morty, after all. Mortys trust their Ricks.

            He keeps poking and prodding at me, tests my reflexes with an honest-to-God rubber mallet from a doctor’s office. Every so often he blinks purposefully hard, and I hear some machine kick on in the background or a screen hum to life with data I can’t make sense of. The whole time he’s silent, sliding around me like a ghost—his sneakers don’t even squeak against the floor.

            “Lie back,” he commands after a short while. “The examination will continue.”

            “Whatever,” I groan yet comply. The reclining back starts whirring up to a 45-degree angle so I’m half-sitting and staring right into a harsh fluorescent light. “N-not really sure what you’re getting out of this, to be honest, other than some kind of ego trip.”

            “Plenty,” he responds curtly.

            “Did Evil Rick put you up to this?” I can’t help it when a smirk crawls up my face. “W-w-what, are you like his little nurse or somethin’? Little nurse’s aide? Gonna clean me up and make sure I take my m-medicine before the big bad doctor comes in—”

            “He’s dead.”

            What? This was news. “Run that by me again?”

            “He’s dead. The one you call Evil Rick was slaughtered by an angry hoard of Mortys, who beat him to death. I presume their frustration stemmed from their extended internment and slavery.”

            “Whoa, whoa, whoa! When did you learn all those polysyllabic words?”

            He gives me the finest side-eye someone with only one visible eye could muster.

            “Okay, okay, maybe hanging around Evil Rick expanded your vocabulary. I’m sorry he’s dead, though, kid. Must be rough being without him. So what, is this his dying wish? For you to get your hands on me and poke through my brain again?”

            “I’m not going to dignify that with any substantial response.” He flips up his eyepatch and moves the light a few inches so it hovers over my forehead. I squint and see a maze of micro-circuitry and diodes glowing away under crisscrossing wires. A pair of thin cables, one red and one blue, dangles from the bottom of the eyepatch; a matching pair is trailing out from under his lower eyelid. Wait, what?

            “Hey, uh. Got a little somethin’, ah, right there,” I mumble, pointing to my cheek.

            He rolls his eye—that’s right, his _eye_. The one he just uncovered stays in place, motionless, while he shoves the cables back into his eyelid with one finger. Okay, something’s a bit fucky here.

            “You seem perplexed, Rick.”

            “Well, I dunno if you ever had a ph-physiology lesson, but generally _both_ eyes roll when someone’s trying to indicate they’re being sarcastic.”

            “I wouldn’t have guessed.” He reaches off to the side to fiddle with some silver surgical tools on a rolling tray next to the exam table. He turns back to me, a scalpel balanced delicately between his fingers, and digs the scalpel right into his eyelid. The eyeball pops out into his waiting palm; cables and ribbons of bloody optic muscle flop onto his cheek.

            “Jesus _Christ!_ G-g-give a guy some warning before you do something crazy like that!” My stomach’s jumped up into my throat. If I’d eaten anything in the past week, I’d be hurling right now. “W-w-w-what the hell?”

            “It’s a fake eye, Rick,” he replies casually, as if someone mentioned clouds had drifted over the sun. “Built it myself. Contains a 150 megapixel camera—sharper focus than anything available on the greater galactic market. People sell their limbs to get ahold of technology like this.” He giggles, but there’s no mirth behind his laughter at all. It’s downright cruel, even by my admittedly low standards. “Some of them _have_ sold them. To me, of course.”

            “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s all great,” I wave my hand dismissively. “You’re a real entrepreneur. But what happened to you? I knew that eyepatch had to be a f-front for something.”

            “Mmm.” The eye in Morty’s palm lolls off to the side, as if lost in thought. His other eye stays pointedly fixed on me, though, along with the gaping, bloody eye socket. “I suppose it has been a long time. How do I put this…the giant frogs on Persei 6 have some nasty, sharp teeth, don’t they?”

            I stare at him, bewildered. “What the hell are you talking about now?”

            “The giant frogs on Persei 6 have nasty, sharp teeth. Come on, Rick. Think. It’s what you’re supposedly good at.”

            I ignore the backhanded insult and dig back through my memories. Persei 6. Been a while since I was around there, mostly because I managed to piss off the royal family ruling that particular star system. They had valuable underground sulfur pools there: if you could brave the noxious stink of the caverns, you could end up with some valuable elemental sulfur crystals scraped from the sides of the pool. Morty was there with me last time, I’m sure of it. Yeah…yeah, he was. Complained the whole time about the stink, of course, even though he had a gas mask on and I didn’t. And for some godforsaken reason, there were giant frogs in the cavern we snuck into that got their skins in a bunch about us being down there. We had to drop the crystals, which basically made the whole trip a loss, and run for it. We somehow climbed out of there and took off across the desert.

            _“Rick! Rick, slow down! I—h-huff!—I can’t keep up!”_

_“You gotta do it, Morty! You gotta do it for Grandpa!” My eyes scan the landscape for a flat, somewhat smooth surface. Portals are more stable when set up on flatter surfaces as opposed to rougher ones; tearing time and space apart already increases entropy, so anything to make it more predictable is a plus. And we **need** to have this work. Gotta get home._

_I can’t look behind me or off to the side. Eye contact with those damn frogs seems to enrage them even more. Morty’s occasional yelps tell me we’re still being pursued. I consider reaching my hand back for him, grabbing his sticky-with-sweat palm and bringing him to a halt so he can breathe while I fire the portal open. But he won’t go with that. No one wants to hold an old man’s hand, especially not mine._

_This ground looks as flat as any we’ve run across. Instinctively, I pull out the portal gun and fire with my right hand. I hear a thud as I do a half-assed handspring into the portal, but I don’t think about it. Morty isn’t that stupid, he knows when to jump. He should be right behind me, like always. He **should** be._

_He isn’t behind me._

_I’m spit out into the blackness of space proper, floating amongst the barest pinpricks of stars. So hard to turn around without gravity…I somersault, I cartwheel, I do every gymnastic trick my old body can manage, but he’s nowhere around. He’d be calling for me if he was. He’d be scrabbling his way through space trying to reach me. But he’s nowhere in sight._

_“Morty!” I scream into the abyss. “Son of a bitch, Morty, you were supposed to follow me! You were supposed to stagger through the portal like a dumbass and end up here! And we’d be laughing right now—well, I’d be laughing, but you’d be panicking until I cracked some stupid joke and you start nervously giggling because we got out by the skin of our teeth for the umpteenth time. You’re supposed to be here.”_

_I choke back a sob. “You’re not supposed to leave me alone…”_

“Done reminiscing, old man?”

            I snap out of my memories and look back at Morty. Sharp teeth lead to a gruesome fight and a missing eye. Somehow gets away, hops to a new dimension, hooks up with a new Rick…no. The puzzle pieces are coming together, but the end result makes no sense. This _can’t_ be Morty—he would have been torn to shreds. He wasn’t smart enough to escape.

            Fuck, I need a drink.

            “Is it all coming together for you, Rick?” Morty is now pacing around the exam table, his prosthetic eye popped back into place. “Finally starting to understand what’s going on?”

            “H-how,” I stutter, “how the _fuck_ did you do it? How did you get away?”

            Morty sighs dramatically, a move that would have been far more appropriate coming from Summer. “You always underestimated me, Rick. Always tried to keep me down, tried to stop me from reaching my full potential. I might have had my back to the wall, so to speak, but I wiggled my way out. I’ve watched you do it a fair share of times, after all. I’m a fast learner, you see. Pick things up like,” he snaps his fingers, “that.”

            “ _I_ tried to keep you down?! W-where’d you hear that kind of bullshit? If anything, I put you o-on a goddamn pedestal, _Morty_ ,” I sneer at him. “I puffed your ego up so large your tiny feet couldn’t keep your fat head from swelling up and carrying you away.”

            “I was a genius!” Morty raises his voice for the first time, so high that it starts cracking. “Mother and Father couldn’t give me the support I needed, because they didn’t understand. They couldn’t begin to unwrap the gift they’d been handed.”

            “Oh, here we go.”

            “Then when you finally stumbled into my life, I knew I finally had someone to look up to. I finally knew someone who was like me. Someone who could help me realize the full extent of my abilities.” He stops at the end of the table, hands clasped behind his back and a bone-chilling glare in his eyes. “Evidently I miscalculated.”

            “Oh, really?”

            “All you ever did was point out my flaws. You’d focus on the tiny mistakes I made, overlooking the things I actually accomplished. Maybe you did this out of envy.” He takes out a hand from behind his back and starts examining his nails. “Maybe you were worried I’d surpass you and upset the delicate balance of our relationship. I’m supposed to be the Igor to your Frankenstein, according to nearly every other dimension. But I’m an anomaly. And you couldn’t stand to be different. Because for all your grandstanding about not caring what others think, Rick, that’s a lie. You’d love nothing more than to fit in.”

            “Y-yeah, well,” I splutter, “you seemed to have gotten on without me just fine, haven’t ya? Got yourself a whole new Rick so you could play the underling again.”

            “He was my puppet.”

            “Say what?”

            Morty rolls his eyes, both of them this time. “Evil Rick, as you and the Council of Rick called him, had a transmitter planted in his brain. My eyepatch held the transmitter, which I smashed as soon as the guards swarmed my hideout. Then I followed the rest of those ‘poor, Rick-less bastards’ out into the cargo ship the Council had parked outside, and no one was ever the wiser.”

            My stomach turns in horror. “You just let Evil Rick die.”

            “He’d served his purpose and the Mortys needed a punching bag.” Morty shrugs, not looking up from his nails. “The transmitter was beginning to fail, and I really didn’t feel like performing brain surgery that week.”

            “So the other Ricks…”

            “All my doing. It became an effective system, really. I’d find an easily exploitable dimension along the Central Finite Curve, send Rick out to it, have him kill the existing Rick, kidnap the Morty, and have him brought back to add to the lattice. I realize I could have done roughly the same thing with only five other Mortys and a jumper cable,” here Morty looks directly at me, a cold smirk on his face, “but we both know my brainpower would easily be detected through such a simplistic design.”

            “It was a sketch on the back of a napkin!” I throw my hands up in the air. “It wasn’t meant to be perfect.”

            “Nor was it. My final product was far superior.”

            “You still haven’t told me your plan yet, oh Nefarious One. Evil Rick got whacked, so what do you want with me? You know damn well I’m not joining you.”

            “Of course not. I wouldn’t expect you to.” Morty turns to a console and blinks at it a few times. A hologram of a gigantic tree with multitudes of interlocking branches springs to life between us, washing his face over with a pale blue glow. He points at a pulsating red node on the tree where several branches start braiding together. “You see, Rick, your being captured by the Galactic Federation is something of a temporal convergence. It’s happening in several dimensions as we speak: either you’re just being caught, being booked, or you’ve been spending a short amount of time in prison. Either way, you’re not a free man.”

            “Good to know there’s some other Ricks who’ve got it rough like I do,” I mutter, crossing my arms.

            “ _Anyway_ , with Ricks locked up, I can carry out my plan. You remember Operation Phoenix? It was your attempt to cheat death and achieve immortality. Through cloning, of all things.”

            “Let me guess: you stole my idea by scanning through my brain waves and replicated my experiment, so now there’s a whole legion of Rick clones floating around in tanks like mine, bathing in a proprietary blend of saline, electrolytes, and preservatives that _I_ came up with, so if I find that shit on the market anywhere when I get out of here, I’ll come back and kick your evil little ass, and now that legion of clones are available to do your evil bidding.” Now it’s my turn to e-examine my nails condescendingly. “Did I hit a grounder to right field, or did I knock it out of the fucking park?”

            A flash of shock flits across Morty’s face before he recovers and assumes his usual vaguely pissed-off expression. Nailed it. “D-does it really matter? I’ve got what I want now.”

            “And what exactly is that? Sounds to me like you just have a room full of naked old guys which, I gotta say, is pretty creepy.”

            “I have the key to liberating every Morty in the Central Finite Curve.”

            I blink a couple times, then burst out laughing. Is he serious? “Oh my God! You’re actually turning this into some great campaign to save Mortys from their Ricks? Well, let me give you a news flash: not every Morty out there is like you. You said it y-yourself—you’re an anomaly. So, what, you send a Rick in to replace their imprisoned Rick, have _them_ disappear, and leave the Morty all alone so he’ll hopefully develop his genius independently? That’s a fuckin’ riot; you’re just creating more competition, you know.”

            “No.” Morty flips the eyepatch down over his prosthetic and paces toward me, nostrils flared in annoyance. “They won’t all be geniuses, and that’s not the point. The point is to save them the pain of believing they finally have someone that cares. I’m helping them rip off the Band-Aid they can’t even see is there anymore because the skin has grown over it.”

            “All because of an accident? You’re gonna fuck over countless other Mortys’ lives just ‘cause you got an emo streak about being abandoned by _accident_?”

            “You and me both know that was no accident, Rick.” He’s hovering uncomfortably close to my face now. “You saw what I was becoming, and you didn’t like that you’d had any part to play in it. So you did the thing you know how to do best: leave. You’ve been leaving broken things behind your whole life: me, Beth, Leona—”

            “How the _fuck_ ,” I spit, “do you know about Leona?” Blood is rising to my face, and I grit my teeth. The little son of a bitch better not have laid a finger on her.

            “How do you think you’ve been hearing her voice this whole time?” Morty pulls back and draws a pair of wireless earbuds out of his lab coat pocket. “Her whole ship’s bugged, thanks to the very enterprising and convincing clone I managed to put in your place back at the penitentiary. The poor woman thinks she broke you out of prison and has you secured in her cargo hold, but,” he shrugs his shoulders, “it’s not really you.”

            My eyes fly open, and I lunge for his scrawny little neck. Thick black restraints spring out from tiny slots on the side of the exam table and clamp me down to the cold cushion. I buck against them, but that only digs them in tighter against my flesh.

            “You know, it’s really convenient that your new Morty somehow hooked up with her. Two birds with one stone—you know how the saying goes.”

            “ _YOU KEEP YOUR DISGUSTING HANDS OFF OF HER, YOU FUCKING PSYCHOPATH!”_

            “Sociopath, Rick. I’m a sociopath. But those classifications are outdated by galactic standards nowadays. I prefer the term evil.” With an ugly smirk, he turns away, hands clasped behind his back. “And it won’t be _my_ hands on her, anyway. They’ll be yours.”

            “ _AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!_ ” I scream and struggle against the restraints, although I know it’s an exercise in futility. I’m beyond angry now—I’m enraged. That little shit stain had better hope I don’t figure out how to get out of these things, or he’ll be history.

            “Uh-uh-uh! Bad Rick.” Morty turns his head and blinks hard at me three times. All of a sudden, my ears come alive with crackling static, then Leona’s voice fading in slowly. It sounds like she’s comforting Morty, who sounds like he’s crying. Oh shit, why is he crying? Who upset him like this?

            “See? I’m keeping you in the loop as to what’s going on, Rick. I could just shut everything down in the blink of an eye—literally—and you’d be left in the dark. You wouldn’t know whether she’s alive or dead. This way, you’ll have the horror of knowing when you decide to take her out.”

            I stare daggers after the kid.

            “Nighty-night, _Grandpa,_ ” he simpers. He walks out of the lab and closes the door behind him, plunging me into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, shit.


	14. Breathless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit goes ham, broh. 
> 
> Content warning: mild sexual content, canon-typical violence.

**Summer**

            “Are we there yet?”

            “ _Traveling at our current rate, we should arrive at your destination in approximately two hours. If you choose to engage boosters along with the hyperdrive, we could be there in approximately one hour. However, this will require re-routing some of the ambient oxygen to the boosters—_ ”

            “No, no, that’s fine. I’m not in that much of a hurry that I want to asph…asphyxia…not breathe.” I spin around lazily in the captain’s chair—it’s still called a captain’s chair if the ship is on autopilot, right? “Just keep going. Do what you’re doing, _Desperado_. It’s great.”

            “ _I appreciate the compliment. We shall proceed as planned._ ”

            I rub the heels of my palms into my eyes in an attempt to wake myself up. There’s not really much to do on the ship besides sleep and eat: I’m too far out of range to receive any TV signals, and I doubt Unity would want me to try to tune anything in and risk getting detected. And I’m too wired to sleep anymore—I’ve taken more naps lately than I have since kindergarten. The ship AI thankfully lacks the sass the Gazorpian ship had, but it’s almost devoid of personality. It doesn’t usually speak to me unless it’s recalibrating our path or if it’s answering a question I have. Which is why it’s very weird when that smooth computerized voice starts talking to me out of the blue.

            “ _Summer?_ ” the ship asks almost shyly. “ _May I ask what you hope to find at your destination?_ ”

            “Uh…” I’m not sure how to answer that, since I’m a little freaked out that the ship has a sense of curiosity about, well, anything. Seemed to me like it was just meant to go one place and be done with it, like one of those Meseeks from Grandpa Rick’s box. “My little brother. I’m hoping to find him.”

            “ _The two of you were separated?_ ”

            “Not by choice.”

            “ _Mmm,_ ” the ship hums. “ _I only have older siblings, older operating systems which have since been retired to make way for me. I do not know what it’s like having anyone younger than myself, since that would mean my own obsolescence._ ”

            “It’s strange, that’s for sure.” Morty and I are only three years apart in age, but it’s enough of a difference to make me annoyed that I had to be his Halloween chaperone when I was fifteen. It’s enough to set off pangs of jealousy that he got cooler toys than I ever dreamed of asking for as Christmas and birthday presents. It’s enough to make it so we’re looking at opposite ends of high school, Morty the wide-eyed freshman and me the jaded senior. It’s enough of a difference that I became his unofficial babysitter whenever Mom and Dad would go out and try to resuscitate their marriage with date nights. Is it really babysitting, though, if you go your separate ways after a microwaved mac-n-cheese dinner and you find your weird little brother curled up on the roof of your house three hours later after binging on _The Bachelorette_?

            “ _Morty!_ ” I remember hissing out my bedroom window more than once. “Get down from there before Mom and Dad get home, or they’ll kill us both!”

            “Oh, just…j-just leave me alone, Summer!” he’d squeak back at me, his voice several octaves higher than it is now that puberty hit him. “I’m doing something! Let them ground me or you or w-whatever.”

            “What the hell _are_ you doing up there, anyway?”

            “You swore.” Even through the dark, I could see his trollish little grin. “Y-you gotta put a quarter in the swear jar now, haha.”

            “Shit, bitch, f—” I remember being unable to force my thirteen-year-old tongue to drop an f-bomb. “ _Asshole._ There, now I’ll put a dollar in the jar. Happy?”

            Sometimes he’d say yes just to piss me off even more. Other times he’d slide off the roof tiles without a word and crawl back in through my bedroom window just as the headlights from Dad’s station wagon lit up the driveway. It wasn’t until about a year ago that Morty actually confessed to me what he’d been doing up there all those years.

            “I-I know it sounds really weird, Summer,” he said, sitting on the edge of my bed, hands folded in his lap. “But I have this dream, this re-recurring dream where a kinda old guy picks me up like I’m tiny, like a fragile baby bird, and he carries me to the window to look out at the night sky. He tells me to look up at the stars whenever I feel lonely, so I-I don’t feel so bad. And,” Morty’s voice dropped to a whisper, “he says he’ll come back for me.”

            Grandpa Rick showed up about a week after that, when Morty was having another private stargazing session. An ugly knot of guilt sat in my chest for a while—why hadn’t I realized my little brother was lonely? What kind of a big sister was I if I couldn’t see Morty had needed a friend for so long? Maybe I should have crawled out on the roof a couple times to join him. We wouldn’t have had to talk or anything. We could have just, I dunno, looked up at the stars and tried to connect the tiny white dots in our own constellations. I wonder if that’s how Grandpa Rick finds his way around when he jumps dimensions: he looks for something familiar in the skies to guide him. Or maybe it’s dumb luck that helps him get home every time.

            Still, I don’t know what I’ll find once I find Morty. Unity seemed to think whoever took him also managed to bust Grandpa Rick out, so whoever it is has enough smarts or muscle to successfully slip into an intergalactic max-security prison, get Grandpa out undetected, _and_ keep him under Federation radar for this long without being caught. The good news is I’ll probably find Grandpa Rick and Morty together; the bad news is I have no idea what their captor looks like. Am I looking for some kind of testicle monster wearing a ratty military uniform while waving to their frightened yet admiring public from a balcony? Or some kind of mob boss sitting behind a desk, resting her scaly chin on interlaced claws while she contemplates her next victim? Oh my God, what if it’s Cthulhu behind the desk and it sentences all three of us to death by black hole for stealing its baby? Was my apology not enough?

            I take a deep breath, reach down to the belt around my waist, and touch the holster strapped to it. The laser gun was lying here on the captain’s chair, safety on, when I first tried on the bodysuit. It’s nothing fancy, nothing like those guns Grandpa Rick gave me to fight those mind-worm parasites. I just hope it’s enough to fight off whoever or whatever I might find once I find Morty. I just hope he’s alive and relatively okay, because there really hasn’t been much okay in our lives for a long time.

            I hope I can protect him. That’s what big sisters are supposed to do for little brothers.

 

**Leona**

            We need to make a pit stop, _y pronto._ Our food rations are running low, as are the funds to actually buy any food for our survival. Morty is a growing boy who needs his strength; he can’t continue to eat saltines and electrolyte water for the rest of his days. He deserves better than that.

            “ _¿Estás listo para dormir en una cama real, Morty?_ ” I ask over my shoulder as we draw closer to our destination. He’s rummaging around in the cupboards, looking for a snack. Sadly, I don’t think he’s going to have much luck finding anything different. The only variety we have in the pantry is a massive jar of peanut butter, which I suppose he could eat by the spoonful. Better than those chalky protein pills I have stashed away, at any rate.

            “ _Claro._ Um… _¿Adónde vamos?_ ” he replies, shuffling back up to where I’m sitting in the cockpit. Sure enough, he found the peanut butter and a clean spoon, and he plops down in the co-pilot’s seat, gingerly unscrewing the lid and setting it aside.

            “I have a _casa segura_ —safe house—on a moon not far from here. We can stay there for a few days, stock up on supplies. There aren’t any active bounties I’m interested in right now, and Tim- Tam has apparently been behaving himself. We can take a nice little vacation.”

            “Th-thafe houth?” Morty says through a mouthful of peanut butter. He takes an uncomfortably huge swallow before continuing. “I thought spies had safe houses, a-and drug dealers and stuff.”

            “There are no spies or drugs in this house, Morty. _Te promeso._ It’s a modest cabin on the edge of a lake, very serene. And yes, it is a lake of water, so you can finally take a shower without cringing.”

            “I haven’t been cringing!”

            “You complain about the water being purified piss, _cariño. Puedo oírte._ Incidentally, I can also hear you, ah, enjoying your own company in there.”

            Morty nearly swallows the spoon, the tips of his ears burning red. He fumbles for a response even more than usual before dropping the jar of peanut butter, balling up in his chair, and wrapping his arms around his knees, burying his face.

            “ _Estoy embarazada_ _,_ ” he mumbles.

            I burst out laughing. “Unless you got extra frisky with that female Lomai we captured a week ago, there’s no way you’re pregnant.”

            “Wh-what?! No, that’s n-not what I meant! I…oh geez, I…ugh!” Morty grunts and curls into a tighter ball.

            “Beginner’s mistake, Morty. You meant to say _me da vergüenza._ I understood you regardless.”

            “Why are you listening to me masturbate in the shower, anyway?!” he blurts.

            “It’s hard not to. _Eres bastante ruidoso_ ,” I shrug and steer the ship out of orbit around the moon, dipping down into the atmosphere. “ _Por cierto_ , you really need to call that Jessica girl you’re always moaning about. Ask her out. She sounds lovely, and you clearly adore her.”

            Morty says nothing, but he hugs his knees so tightly to his chest that his knuckles threaten to pop through the skin on his hands. I concentrate on guiding our ship down through the clouds and skimming down a few feet above the packed brown dirt, scanning the horizon. This moon has little wind, so unless some other bounty hunter came around and smashed the place to bits since I’d last been around—aha! The little cabin is still crouching by the lake, same as ever. Only a few stones around the fire pit seem to have been knocked out of place; that could have been only of those wild zeese I’ve seen running around.

            Morty wastes no time in scampering out the back door and jumping out of the ship, taking in the fresh air. He actually does a few cute little twirls in the dirt before turning to look at the gently lapping lake and sighing happily.

            “Ohhh…this place is so nice, Leona,” he tells me as I slowly climb down the steps. I-I mean, we’ve only been here for like a minute, but I really, really like it. I can finally get clean, a-and eat food, and sleep in a real _bed_. I mean, not that the ship isn’t great—”

            “There’s no replacement for terra firma, Morty. _Lo entiendo,_ ” I reply. “And there’s something to be said for being able to properly care for yourself. You’ve been on the run for so long now that it’s hard to remember what normal feels like.”

            “Y-yeah.” Morty sniffles and swipes a hand across his face. Oh _Dios_ , is this moving him to tears?

            “Mm, _no llores, cariño._ I know it’s been difficult.” I reach out a hand to touch his shoulder, but end up drawing him in for a hug. He presses into my chest for a second before remembering his awkwardness and picking his head up. “You have done so well for someone so young and being out on their own. So very well. Now it’s time to relax.”

            “Uh-huh.”

            “C’mon. Let’s go check out the kitchen. I think there’s things in there to make s’mores.” I give him a quick peck on the forehead and pat his back before heading toward the cabin. The door swings open with a gentle push of my hand, and we’re greeted by dust motes dancing in the fading light streaming in through the window over the sink. Morty goes for the small icebox sitting next to the counter and starts rummaging through it hungrily. I lean against the back of one of the kitchen chairs and rub at my left knee, trying to work out some of the lingering pain.

            “Look, Leona! Chocolate bars!” Morty holds up three king-size frozen chocolate bars in victory before glancing at me. His smile drops away. “Hey, you okay?”

            “Wha? Oh, yes, Morty, yes. I’m fine,” I wince. “My prosthetic is chafing me a bit, that’s all. We haven’t been anywhere to get sleeves for a while, so the skin is a little raw.”

            “Oh.” He swings the icebox door shut and sets the chocolate bars on the table. “So, no s’mores, then?”

            “You can have as many as you want, _cariño_. I’m going to lie down in my room for a while and see how I feel. I’m an old lady, after all, I need my rest,” I grin. “You can start a fire in the pit outside without torching this place, right?”

            “Uh, yeah! Duh!” Morty scoffs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Laser beam into a pile of kindling. W-what could go wrong with that?”

            “ _Be careful_ ,” I warn him. “Marshmallows and graham crackers should be in the cupboard, along with toasting forks or skewers or something. Have fun.”

            I limp out of the kitchen and down the hall, listening behind me all the while. Morty takes his precious time finding the rest of his stuff, but soon I hear the door swing shut with a whoosh of air behind him. Such a good boy. I wasn’t kidding about my prosthetic hurting me, though—I really do need to stretch out and have a quick nap, maybe put on some salve. But if I’m honest, and for the most part I am, I have another reason for heading off to the bedroom.

            The brass doorknob burns under my grip. What am I waiting for? It’s not like he would have gone anywhere since the last time I’d stopped in. There are no dishes in the sink, so either his meticulous housecleaning habits haven’t changed over the years or he hasn’t eaten anything in days. _Tonto._ Still, anticipation is pounding through my chest, making me uneasy. What is he expecting from me? What am I expecting from him? We’re not as young as we used to be, regardless of how much we both pretend we haven’t aged. Is he still going to be receptive? What if we…?

            No. We can still do this. I twist the doorknob and push my way into the room. The scene is so nostalgic it brings a lump to my throat. Rick is sitting on top of the faded comforter, shirtless, tinkering with a tiny screwdriver and something metallic in his hands. A pair of wire-rimmed, half-moon glasses perch on the end of his nose while he works. His khakis are a little tattered and stained, though admittedly I’d dug them up from the back of my closet from years ago, but otherwise he looks no worse for the wear than I’d expect. He looks up at me from behind his glasses almost bashfully, setting his work aside and sitting up straighter on the bed.

            “Hey,” he says as I shut the door behind me.

            “Hey,” I reply, tottering over to the bed and sitting down with a creak from the mattress.

            “Took you long enough to make your way back here.”

            “I had a couple jobs I needed to finish first.” I curl my legs underneath me as best I can, trying not to wince. “You understand.”

            “ _Claro._ ” Rick’s gaze flicks between my eyes and my lips. He’s never been terribly subtle when he knows what he wants, even though he loves to portray himself as some kind of mystery. Rick reaches a hand out to touch me, but keeps it drawn back just enough, apprehensive about what we’re doing here until I close the gap and press my lips to his. He takes this as a cue to pull me closer to him, arms wrapping tight around my back and I’m home, I’m home, I’m home.

            “I missed you _,_ ” he breathes before inching in for another kiss. “ _Te extrañé mucho, Leona, lo siento…_ ”

            “Shh,” I whisper in his ear. “Shh, _está bien._ We’re together now, that’s what matters. Just the two of us. Rick and Leona for 100 years, _¿recuerdas?_ Like you used to tell me.”

            Rick nods and tilts his head back on the pillows, giving me room to kiss down his jaw and neck. There’s a thin silver mark slicing across his jugular, a close call he must have had fairly recently. It’s a little sick, but every time he’d return home when Beth was young, I’d relish our first nights back together in bed so I could map out all the fresh marks on his body with my fingertips. Every cut, every bruise, every scar told a story of whatever terrifying and wonderful worlds he’d traveled to; I imagined I’d get a little stardust caught under my fingernails just by touching him.

            His own hands are roaming over my body like they’ve been starved for human contact. It doesn’t take long for one to slip up under my shirt and slide up my stomach, which I’m proud to say hasn’t sagged out of place as I’ve aged. My breasts, on the other hand…

            “You’re going braless? A-at your age?” Rick quips. “Y-y-you must think zero gravity is r-really kind to you.”

            “I could say the same about some of your body parts, _tonto,_ ” I tease, nipping at his lower lip.

            “Hey! The things on me that are s-supposed to keep their shape _have_.” He presses his hips tight against mine, and yes, _that_ has not diminished at all. “Exhibit A.”

            “That’s definitely—ah!—convincing. But perhaps it could use a little, ah, exposure? _¿Por favor?_ ” I manage to ask coyly.

            “ _Tan cortés,_ ” Rick smirks. He pulls away to strip himself completely down, and I sit up to tug off my shirt. I reach down to undo my jeans, but hesitate. I don’t know how he’ll react to my prosthetic, and we are just reacquainting with one another after so long. Maybe it would be okay to keep this secret a little while longer, until we find our rhythm again.

            He finishes undressing and slides in place on top of me, teasing my tongue with his own. I trace a finger around the shell of his ear, feeling little indents where his multiple piercings have healed up. I wonder when he took out those earrings for the last time, probably hurling the tiny pieces of silver into a black hole somewhere. Every kiss softens the edges of everything, blurs my reality down to focus on just Rick, who’s at _mi pelo, mi culo, mis labios, mi cuello—_

His hands are grasping at my neck, and not playfully, either.

            I look up and any passion that was dancing in his eyes has vanished, replaced with something colder. Something meaner. He stares down at me like a wolf who’s cornered a rather delectable and terrified rabbit, and his mouth curls into the most sadistic grin I’ve ever seen.

            “R-Ricardo?” I stammer out. “ _¿_ _Qué—_ ACK!”

            Both hands clamp down on my throat, choking out any last words I had to say. He pins me down to the bed with his hips, snarling through gritted teeth as I gasp for air. I thrash underneath him, gripping for the comforter but finding absolutely no comfort there.

            “What the _hell_ ,” Rick hisses, “makes you think I’ll take you back into my arms just like that? A little doting wife turned hard-ass bounty hunter? HA! Don’t kid yourself. You’re still the pedestrian piece of shit I left back on Earth with our daughter. You don’t think I found someone better, someone who’s a thousand times more extraordinary than you could ever dream of being?”

            Tears spill out of my eyes, and not just because of the extreme hold he has on my windpipe. He’s tapping into my deepest insecurities, cutting me down to my core. How could he say such hurtful things? The Rick I know would never call me a piece of shit, would never compare me to anyone he’d been with in the past because in his eyes it’d be like comparing pineapples and cantaloupes. The Rick I know wouldn’t diminish all I’d done to raise our Beth, and he wouldn’t diminish everything I’d done to keep the universe safe now. The Rick I know, Ricardo—

            _This isn’t the Rick you know._

            I don’t know where that voice in my head cropped up from, _pero no me importa._ I bring my knee up sharply and connect with his _cojones_. He crumples into a ball and howls, his hands relaxing their grip around my neck. I give him another kick and start throwing hard jabs at his face, which he tries to block to no avail. He ends up scooting himself off the edge of the bed and collapsing on the floor, backing into the corner as I clamber unsteadily to my feet and tower over him.

            “How fucking dare you,” I growl. “I put my guard down _por un momento._ I think, hey, perhaps my husband would like to make up for lost time. Make amends for how he _abandoned_ me and our daughter. But no. Instead he goes completely fucking _loco_ for no other reason than to tear me down.”

            I shift my weight to my right hip and start kicking out my left foot until I hear the metallic joint clicking, rubbing at my bruised throat at the same time. “One thing is very clear, though. _Usted no es mi esposo._ I don’t know who the hell you are, or why you were hanging in that cell, but although you look like Rick Sanchez, you clearly are not.”

            “L-Leona, _please_ ,” he begs. “I-I can explain—”

            “You lost your opportunity to explain yourself as soon as you betrayed my trust.” I reach down and pull my prosthetic free from my pants leg. His eyes go wide as dinner plates, gulping and looking up at me in horror. “Now you have to pay, _Ricardo_.”

            With that, I scream and come out swinging.

 

**Summer**

I must have passed out again for a long time, because the next thing I hear is the ship begging me to wake up because we’ve arrived at my destination. I jolt awake, my hand still wrapped around the grip of the laser gun in my lap. I unstrap myself from the captain’s chair, take one last look around for anything else I might need, and cautiously tiptoe out of the ship. I’ve landed about 100 yards away from a tiny little cabin next to a lake—it looks so _normal_ compared to the bizarre alien landscapes I’ve seen—and right in front of that cabin, next to a fire pit, is _Morty._

            “MORTY!” I yell, running at full speed across the tight-packed dirt. He barely gets a chance to look up and register who called his name when I scuff to a halt and snatch him up in a tight hug. Something warm and gooey drops onto my shoulder from his hand—a s’more. What the hell?

            “OhmyGodMortyIfoundyouIfoundyouIcan’tbelieveIfoundyouohmyGodthisissucharelief—” I blurt out breathlessly.

            “Uh, S-Summer? Why are you dressed like a spy? And why do you have a g-gun?” he asks, his voice strained from me hugging him so tightly.

            “I’m here to rescue you, dum-dum,” I say, dropping him back down to the dirt. “Here to save you from whatever asshole kidnapped you and stole you away across the galaxy—”

            “Hey, L-Leona isn’t an asshole—”

            A gut-wrenching scream from inside the cabin pierces the air and makes us jump.

            “What the hell was that?!” I exclaim.

            “LEONA!” Morty yells and charges for the cabin, me following right on his heels. He shoves the door open with one hand and dashes through the kitchen and down a dimly lit hallway. The cacophony grows louder and louder: I hear a second person yelping in pain, along with glass breaking and furniture toppling over. Morty cowers in front of the closed bedroom door, afraid to open it, so I take the plunge, gun raised to fire.

            And standing in the middle of absolute chaos is a topless older redheaded woman, beating the tar out of Grandpa Rick with what looks like a prosthetic leg.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow.


	15. A Whole Hell of a Lot of Explaining to Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exactly as it says on the tin, broh.

**Summer**

“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?!”

            Personally, I don’t drop the f-bomb all that much. However, I think I’m perfectly justified in using that word right now, because I’m currently looking at:

  * An absolutely trashed bedroom, with a broken lamp shattered all over the floor, a tipped-over nightstand, a bed that’s been shoved all the way to the opposite wall, and clothes and bed sheets ripped up and scattered everywhere;
  * Grandpa Rick lying unconscious on the floor on his stomach, head twisted off to the side, blood dripping from his nose and mouth and ugly red splotches all over his skin;
  * A half-naked woman who I’ve never seen in my life and is about 97% likely to be Morty’s kidnapper, holding a prosthetic leg aloft like the most dangerous murder weapon in the world, standing right over Grandpa Rick’s body.



           Morty is shaking like a leaf, his hands trembling against my sides as he clings to me in terror. I hear him whisper “R-Rick? Rick?” over and over under his breath, and my heart almost breaks. Yes, I’m worried about Grandpa and he’s definitely going to need medical attention from…somewhere, but right now I’m more concerned with the crazy lady standing above him.

           “Drop it!” I yell at her, holding my laser gun out with two hands.

           “What are you, a cop?” she sasses back, but she drops the prosthetic and puts her hands behind her head. She tries to kneel down even though I didn’t ask her to, and I kind of feel like a dick because she’s trying to kneel down with one whole leg and one cut off at the knee, which just makes everything more awkward. I keep the gun aloft while she shifts down into place, hands still behind her head. She’s obviously been arrested before, a career criminal. Crap.

           “Uh, S-Summer?” Morty stammers out from behind me. “C-could we possibly, I dunno, get Leona a shirt—”

           “Oh please, Morty, you’ve seen women more naked than this,” I scoff. “Besides, you’re just uncomfortable with the fact that she’s _old_ and naked, not young. She doesn’t fit into your typical vision of a woman passively offering up her femininity to you, so you’re having a bit of—what’s it called—cognitive dissonance.”

           “She’s right, you know,” the woman says with a shrug.

           “I didn’t say you could talk!” I threaten, re-training the gun on her forehead. “What’s your name?”

           “You’re sending me mixed messages, _cariña_. Either you want me to talk or you don’t—”

           “ _I said what’s your name?_ ”

           “Seriously, are you a cop? Because I don’t make a habit of talking to cops. I exercise my right to remain silent at all possible turns.”

           “She’s not a cop, Leona,” Morty sighs, exasperated. To my surprise, he steps out from behind me and pushes me aside to stand in front of me. “ _Ella es mi hermana._ ”

           Leona’s eyebrows furrow, creasing her forehead. “ _¿Su hermana?_ ”

           Morty sighs again. “ _Desafortunadamente._ ”

           “ _Todo un petardo, ¿verdad?_ ”

           “Can you please speak so I can understand the two of you?” I ask.

           “It’s not my fault you had to take dumbass _French_ , Summer!” Morty rounds on me, annoyed. “Jeez, get on track with stuff.”

           “Hey, hey, now, Morty, be nice,” the woman chides him. “There are several Francophone regions in this galaxy and others. It’s not a completely useless language to know.”

           “Thank you!” I say before remembering myself. “Now answer my question from before.”

           “ _Ay_ , fine _._ _Mi nombre es Leona Ysabel Sánchez Pérez._ Happy?”

           “Uh…” Admittedly, I don’t know what I thought knowing her name would do for me. Maybe it was just so I could call her something other than ‘the woman’ in my head?

           “You have no clue who I am, do you?” Leona asks with a smirk.

           “Uh…”

           “Our grandmother,” Morty cuts across.

           “ _What?!_ ” Leona and I say at the same time.

           Morty fishes around in his back pocket and draws out a crinkled old Polaroid. I get a glimpse of red and blue hair before he flips it around to show Leona, who inches closer to us on her knees to get a closer look.

           “This,” Morty says, his voice shaking. “This fell out of the back of your marriage certificate when I accidentally opened the locker. A marriage certificate that says you married Ricardo An-Andreas—no—well, something Rodríguez Sánchez. And Rick Sanchez is our grandpa, which means—”

           “ _Nada_ ,” Leona says crisply. “It means nothing, Morty. I could have married him, and he could have knocked up someone else and had your mother.”

           “If you only married him, how do you know he had a daughter with someone else a-a-and not a son?”

           There’s a long pause before Leona hisses “ _mierda_ ” under her breath. I shoot a quick awe-filled glance at Morty, whose eyes are fixated on Leona. When did he get to be so logical?

           Leona’s eyes dart back and forth between the two of us before bowing her head. I hear a little sob heave out of her chest, and she takes a hand down to draw it across her face. I lower my gun cautiously, not really sure what is going on right now.

           “It’s true,” she mutters after a long while. “I’ve been married to Rick Sanchez for 35 years. Our daughter is Elizabeth Leona Sanchez—I assume she still goes by Beth, _¿verdad?_ ”

           I see Morty nod slowly out of the corner of my eye. “Y-yeah,” he answers, “that’s our mom’s name.”

           “Wait, wait, wait,” I interject. “You’re _married_ to Grandpa Rick? As in currently?”

           “ _Sí._ Not according to any government on Earth or otherwise, mind you,” Leona says with a tilt of her head. “According to the United States government, we’ve been divorced since 1998.” She grins, and I see the glint of metal fillings on both sides of her mouth.

           “So then how—”

           “ _En espíritu, cariña._ We’re married in spirit, Rick and I. No need for papers, just the promise of eternal love. Vows bind us stronger than any certificate ever could.”

           Morty and I share a look, a look that seems to ask each other if this woman is totally all there upstairs. Maybe she’d hit herself in the head with her prosthetic leg one too many times while beating up Grandpa Rick. Which brings up a more pressing point…

           “Why have you been keeping Rick here?” Morty asks, taking the question right out of my mouth. “I-I-I mean, he’s been out of prison all this time? You were gonna lead me on a wild goose chase all over the galaxy to find him when he was holed up in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, w-waiting for you to come home and do,” he squirms, “whatever _this_ is to him? I-I mean, is this some kind of fetish thing, or—”

           “She was going to sell the two of you off,” I interrupt.

           “W-what?”

           I muster up the fiercest glare possible and look Leona dead in the eyes. Her grin evaporates on the spot. “It’s true, isn’t it? You somehow got Grandpa Rick out of prison, and he’s gotta have a huge reward on his head because he escaped. So you were gonna turn him back in and collect the money, but then Morty happened to show up, and you thought ‘Hey, two for the price of one!’ Because there are people out there who’d pay a lot of money to get Grandpa Rick under his control, but they _know_ he won’t work unless they’ve got Morty, too.” Morty glances back at me, eyes wet, but I keep going. Unity’s words flood back to me. “It’s a carrot and stick thing. They have a special bond.”

           “L-Leona?” Morty sputters out. “I-Is this true? You were gonna _sell_ me?” Leona bites down on her lower lip and shakes her head violently, but he presses her. “Tell me the truth! Th-the whole truth this time. Quit lying to me!”

           “All right! Yes!” Leona winces. “ _Jesus Christo_ , _sí._ That was my initial plan after I found you: collect Rick from the cabin, put you under, and find out who was offering the highest bounty for Rick’s head. But Morty, please. _Tienes que entender._ ” She tears her eyes away from me and looks into his face. “The life of a bounty hunter is hard, so hard. You’ve been around with me, you’d know. The bounty I’d reap from turning over you and Rick would’ve set me for life, allowed me to retire. I could spend the rest of my days on Mars 72 with the giant spiders, knitting until my hands gnarled too much from arthritis. Or maybe I’d find a nice beach planet with sun-kissed sand and spend the rest of my days lounging under the trees.”

           “But I don’t understand—” I try to say, but Leona continues.

           “That was _before_ I bonded with you, Morty. That was before I got to know what a sweet young man you are, and such a quick learner. I suspected that you and Rick had some connection, yes, but I didn’t know for certain. There were rumors floating through the bounty hunter grapevine—and _yes_ , that exists, so you can stop giving me that look,” Leona says with a twitch of her eyebrows. “Nothing was confirmed. I see now, though, that the relation is unmistakable.”

           I take a moment to look over Leona’s tan face, and yeah, I can see it now. She and Mom have the same sharp angled nose, the hair that falls in waves down around the chin and shoulders. I’ve suspected Mom dyes her hair—it’s always been a little too blond to be natural, and I’ve seen deep red roots growing out when she’s had to forgo trips to the salon. Leona’s got her mouth twisted up in a wry smile right now, the same one Mom wears whenever she think she’s gotten one up on Dad. And the way she’s looking at Morty right now, pleading with a hint of sharp wit? Well, that’s totally Mom. Like mother, like daughter.

           “Why would you do that to your husband, though?” I ask after a while. “I mean, you obviously still love him—”

           “ _Y lo odio_ _también._ You think I wouldn’t be just the slightest bit resentful that he left me to raise an unruly teenage daughter, your mother, by myself? You think I wouldn’t have a score to settle for that?” Leona drops her folded hands to her lap and shrugs. “Call me petty if you want, but I’d like to see you refuse the opportunity.”

           I look down at the gun in my hands, look back up at her, and return the gun to my holster. Maybe this moon lacked enough oxygen in the atmosphere for us to all breathe properly, so we’re all a little off-kilter brain-wise, but what Leona said made sense. Vindictive as it would have been to turn Grandpa Rick over, it would have ensured her survival until she died. No more running ragged after potentially dangerous criminals on her own time. I’d seen enough self-preservation thinking out of Mom and Dad (not to mention Grandpa) to see the logic behind Leona’s actions.

           “H-how did you get here?” Morty whispers after a long moment. “I mean, unless y-you’re telling us our mom is an alien, you have to be from Earth. Th-that’s what you told me in the bar all that time ago.”

           “I didn’t lie about that, _cariño_. That much is true.” Leona looks pointedly at me. “If I’m allowed to stand up and move, the explanation for how I got here is sitting in that nightstand.”

           I nod, and Leona pushes herself unsteadily to her foot. She hobbles over to a nightstand with a giant chunk taken out of the leg leaning against the wall, gingerly pulls open the drawer, and takes out a device about the size of a TV remote. The red bulb on top of it glows dimly, along with a keypad. Leona clutches it by a handle on the bottom of the remote, her finger looped around a trigger. Realization dawns on both Morty and I as she makes our way back toward us.

           “Is that…a _portal gun_?” we both ask.

           “ _Sí_. Like all good inventors, _su abuelo_ created several iterations of the same device, trying to perfect his design,” Leona replies as she comes to a halt in front of us both. “He’d shown me his portal technology years before, but nothing he tried worked reliably. Always ran out of charge or shot off to someplace other than your destination. When he left, the garage was full of parts and boxes he hadn’t touched for years, things he didn’t bother take with him. I was cleaning out the garage one day after Beth had moved out, found this, and thought ‘Eh, _¿por qué no pruébalo?_ ’ So I fired it at the wall, a lime-green portal burst to life, and I watched it swirl around for a while, thinking.

           “I thought about how, _en realidad_ , I had nothing keeping me tied to Earth anymore. My husband was gone. My job was _important_ , but importance is so relative. I couldn’t imagine myself spending the rest of my days alternating between building prosthetics and fighting tooth and nail for government grants. Not when I had nothing to come home to. One night I came home, packed everything I imagined I could possibly need into a ratty old backpack, and stepped out of _mi vida vieja_ into this new one. It’s where I’ve been ever since.”

           Leona heaves a heavy sigh. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking for Rick along the way. The more selfish part of me thought he didn’t actually want to leave, more that he felt he had to. Maybe he felt like he was constrained being on Earth, like I was forcing him to be something he wasn’t. I never…I never wanted him to feel that way. I just wanted him to be happy.”

           Well. That puts a lot of things in perspective.

           “Um, not to be rude or anything,” Morty interjects, “since you, y’know, kinda just poured your heart out there, but does that portal gun even _work_? I mean w-why’d you show it to us?”

           “You wanted an explanation,” Leona says. “And yes, it works. But when I broke Rick out of prison, I managed to steal his most recent portal gun as well—it’s back in the ship. I suspect the Federation seized it in an attempt to learn more about the technology behind it; the only stable portals they’re able to construct are an _enormous_ waste of energy, not to mention taxpayers’ money.” She cracks a lopsided grin. “Rick is, to my knowledge, the only being in the universe who has perfected at-will interdimensional travel. And it drives the Federation absolutely _loco._ ”

           “Yeah, that’s great and all,” I say, reaching up to adjust my ponytail, “but what’s the point? We have literally _no clue_ where Grandpa Rick is, because I’m pretty sure that body you were just beating up on, Leona,” I nudge a hip in the body’s general direction, “isn’t actually Grandpa Rick. His chest hasn’t moved at all, which it would even if you knocked him out, and he doesn’t have an overpowering smell of alcohol and vomit.” I drop my hands back down and fold my arms over my chest. “I dunno if it’s a clone or one of those freaky mind parasite things we’ve dealt with before or what, but it’s not him. Which means that the portal gun you stole probably isn’t real, either.”

           Leona and Morty exchange a look before glancing back at me in shock.

           “ _Hijo de puta!_ Mother _fucker_!” Leona blurts, fists clenched at her sides. She tries to kick out with her stubbed leg, but goes off balance and nearly falls. Morty rushes over to catch her under the armpits.

           “Gee, way to m-make a shitty situation even shittier, Summer,” he reproaches me, steadying Leona on his shoulders.

           “Me?!” I yell. “I’m not the one who was willing to go on a wild goose chase with a woman I barely knew to find our grandpa! God, Morty, did you even think about how insane that idea was?”

           “I thought you were _dead_!” Morty yells back. “We got separated, and I didn’t know if the Federation just threw you in jail o-o-or tortured you or what! I mean, maybe you didn’t—well, you obviously didn’t die, but I had no clue what happened to you!”

           His chest heaves up and down, trying to catch his breath. I simply stare at him, bewildered. Morty was actually… _worried_ about me?

           “I asked you to help me find Rick. I had no idea it’d go this far, and I’m sorry it did,” Morty continues after a moment. “B-but right now we can’t trust anyone but each other. We’re all we’ve got, even if one of us kicked down the door and held another one at g-gunpoint and the one at gunpoint was gonna sell the third person to someone else.”

            “And don’t forget that the one held at gunpoint is the grandmother of the other two. _Dios mío, soy una abuela._ Eugh!” Leona cringes.

            “So we need a plan,” I say, tapping a finger on my cheek. “We have a ship, but that doesn’t help us cross dimensions. We can’t use a Federation portal since we’re all fugitives. And we can’t use the portal gun to find Grandpa Rick because none of us know which dimension he’s gone to. If the gun is actually fake, there’s no telling where it’ll spill us out in the multiverse, right?”

            “There _is_ actually a way to calibrate it,” Leona corrects me. “But you’re right. Without an exact location, we’re just playing hopscotch across the cosmos.”

            “I-I don’t think that matters,” Morty pipes up.

            “Huh?” I ask, confused. “How doesn’t it matter?”

 

**Morty**

            This is either the dumbest fucking idea I’ve ever had, o-or the smartest one.

            “Um, okay,” I start out, “so this is gonna sound really messed up—”

            “More messed up than all of the mentally scarring trips Grandpa Rick has taken us on?” Summer interrupts.

            “Kinda, but not really—look, will you let me talk?” I say. “Okay. Anyway, th-there’s a Council. Of Ricks. _The_ Council of Ricks. Basically, there’s a Rick and a Morty in every dimension, and the Ricks formed a sort of interdimensional hideout-slash-government to look out for each other.”

            “ _¿_ _Perdóname?_ ” Leona asks, her eyebrow raised quizzically. “Sorry, but that doesn’t sound like the Rick I know. He’s adamantly against any kind of organized government.”

            “I know, it doesn’t make much sense to me, either,” I shrug. “But the Council s-supervises all the Ricks. Keeps track of where they come from, where they go to. The one time they arrested Rick and I, they accused Rick of m-murdering a bunch of other Ricks because all the dimensions where they were killed all appeared in his portal gun history.”

            “So what you’re saying is this Council of Ricks might know where our Rick is?” Summer asks excitedly.

            “P-probably.” I crack a grin for the first time in ages. This could actually work—a plan of mine could actually work out and save Rick. “So all we gotta do is just skip around to a bunch of dimensions and try to get the Council’s attention. They’ll take us back to the Citadel, we’ll explain what we’re doing, and once they realize one of their own is missing—”

            “—they’ll work nonstop until they find him,” Leona finishes my thought. “Shit. If I’d known about this Council, I would have found _mi esposo_ years ago.”

            “Y-yeah,” I laugh shakily. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that myself a while back.” I also can’t believe I came up with a better plan for finding Rick in one minute than I did in six months of planning to bail him out of prison. Maybe I really am getting smarter.

            “Well, if no one objects to this plan, I suggest we get started on it right away,” Leona says. She bends down, grabs her prosthetic off of the floor, and leans on my shoulder while she reattaches it to her leg. “I’m going to get dressed and try to clean up this mess. Go out to the kitchen and grab whatever groceries there are in the cupboards and fridge; the ship is pretty much depleted. Then get back in here so you can pick up the body.”

            “What?” Summer yelps. “Why do we need the body?”

            “For evidence,” Leona replies. “If I know Rick—and I think I’d know my own husband—a whole council full of him won’t believe such a wild story about a fake one of him being in prison without cold, hard evidence lying in front of him. Them. Whatever.” She rolls her eyes and snaps her fingers. “Come on. _Vámonos!_ ”

            I dash out to the kitchen, Summer close on my heels. I start flinging open cupboard doors and raiding what’s inside: packs of ramen, boxes of pasta, cans whose labels are written in alien scripts I can’t hope to read. Summer scoops blocks of cheese and bottles of sports drinks into her arms from the fridge and holds open the door while I waddle out to the ship with food cradled in my shirt.

            “Hey, Morty,” she asks me while we’re restocking the tiny ship kitchen, “were you actually, you know, worried about me while we were apart?”

            “W-what?” I splutter, saving a box of crackers from falling on my head as I stuff the cupboard.

            “I said, were you worried—”

            “I know what you said, Summer. I can _hear_ ,” I snap. “I just can’t believe you’d ask me that question.”

            “…Oh.”

            A moment of silence passes between us.

            “Of course I missed you. You’re my sister,” I say, turning toward her. “I mean, you can be kind of a p-pain in my ass sometimes, and sometimes kind of a bitch, but you’re still my sister.”

            “Well, I’m gonna pretend that you didn’t just insult me and say: I missed you, too, Morty.” Summer takes one step towards me and puts me in a headlock despite the fact that I’m much taller than I once was and starts giving me a knuckle noogie. We’re laughing like idiots when Leona comes marching unevenly up into the ship.

            “Not that I don’t appreciate family bonding time as much as the next _abuela_ ,” she says, “but the body of someone who’s supposedly my husband but really not is still laying on the floor back in the cabin, and _ay_ , my hip is _really_ giving me trouble.”

            “Maybe it wouldn’t give you so much trouble if you didn’t go around beating up old men on a daily basis,” Summer quips on her way out the door.

            “Is that how you talk to your elders?!” Leona yells as I follow Summer out of the ship, but I can hear the laughter bubbling in her throat. “Now hurry up! We need to catch the early bird special so I can be in bed before seven-thirty!”

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not really sure if there's much to say here, other than Leona is still not being as forthcoming as she could be about her past. All will be revealed in good time, though, not to worry.
> 
> The next chapter will have some more comedy in it, I promise.


	16. Enter the Council

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty's plan gets put into action, broh!

**Leona**

            I like being the one who doesn’t have to plan for once. I’m essentially Summer and Morty’s chauffeur while they sit cross-legged in the kitchen, fiddling with my portal gun and scribbling their findings in a steno notebook Summer found stuffed in a drawer. All I have to do is make sure we don’t collide with any asteroids or space debris, _porque no tenemos ninguna destino._ I really could let the autopilot do most of my job, but I stay at the helm anyway. I think it’s more reassuring for _mis nietos_ if I do that.

            Ugh, Summer and Morty are _mis nietos._ There’s no way in hell I can be an _abuela_ already. _Es imposible._

            In any case, piloting makes me thirsty, so I switch on the autopilot temporarily while I walk back to the fridge for a Coke. Both of them are huddled next to each other, Summer with the pen and notebook and Morty typing away on the keypad of my portal gun. The red bulb on top glows brighter than it has in years.

            “Making any progress?” I ask.

            Summer jerks her head up at the sound of my voice, whacking her head against the cupboard and sending the pen flying; Morty barely moves. Ah, yeah, that’s been a problem. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, Summer doesn’t fully trust me yet. She still gets jumpy whenever I enter the room where she is—which is quite frequent, there isn’t that much space on the ship—and she’s constantly whispering comments in Morty’s ear when she thinks I can’t hear. Really, I can’t blame her. I was quite deceptive. It made me think back to when exactly all the lying started (hint: it’s been a very, _very_ long time), and since then I’ve turned over a new leaf. I’m trying to be more honest, emphasis on the _trying_.

            “We’ve figured out a pattern to how the dimensions seem to be named,” Summer replies, pretending as though everything is normal and she didn’t just completely freak out.

            “Oh?”

            “There’s at least one letter, followed by three numbers,” Morty says. “Al-alpha…what did you say they were, Summer?”

            “Alphanumeric.”

            “Right, right. And some of them have little Greek symbols in there, too. I’m guessing that’s to further differentiate between dimensions. Like, Dimension A113 and Dimension A11-Phi-3 are different, but I don’t how,” Morty shrugs and looks up from the portal gun.

            I crack open the can of Coke and take a swig. “Does that really matter _en realidad_? I mean, as long as we don’t die instantaneously when we cross into new dimensions, we should be fine. All we’re doing is trying to get the Council’s attention.”

            “Right, right.”

            “So how _are_ we going to get the Council’s attention?” Summer asks, tapping the pen on the notebook.

            “I-I’m not really sure.” Morty scratches the back of his neck. “I’m guessing they might detect there’s an unpaired Morty jumpin’ around—”

            “Wait. What do you mean by ‘unpaired Morty’?”

            “Well, the Council will freak out if they see that there’s a Morty wandering around without a Rick. Every Rick has a Morty, and every Morty has a Rick. That’s kinda how it works.”

            “Oh, and I bet you’re gonna tell me that not every Morty has a Summer, huh?” Summer crosses her arms over her chest and huffs. “That’s just so typical. I couldn’t find myself in those stupid goggles Grandpa gave us, this stupid Council doesn’t even look for other Summers—”

            “Summer, I don’t _know_ i-if they track other versions of you—”

            “Seriously, _why don’t I exist_?”

            “Why are you suddenly making this about yourself?! W-we’re tryin’ to find Rick here!”

            “ _If anyone cares what I think_ ,” I cut across the bickering, “I think we should get this Council’s attention by finding the nearest Rick and kicking them in the balls.”

            That stymies both of them for a moment, but then the protests begin.

            “Oh my God, Grandma! You can’t just go and kick Rick in the balls!”

            “What the hell, Leona? Wh-what’s even going through your mind when you say stuff like that, huh?”

            “I mean, do all Ricks even _have_ balls?”

            “Fine, fine! I’ll kick one in the head and completely remove genitals from the equation!” I say, rolling my eyes. “All Rick have to have at least one head, right?”

            “Y-yeah…” Morty replies.

            “ _Excelente._ ” I take another swig of Coke and point at the portal gun in Morty’s hands. “Is that ready to use or not?”

            “I-I think so. We’ve been charging it every night after we’re done using it.”

            “Then let’s get this show on the road.”

 

**Morty**

            Leona settles back down in the captain’s seat, while Summer locks herself down in the co-pilot seat. I stand right in between them, aiming the gun out the windshield. My fingers tremble as I squeeze the trigger and a bright green portal blooms about fifty feet outside the ship, pulsing and beckoning us on.

            “O-okay,” I say. “This is Dimension J19—um, there’s a squiggly letter here I can’t read—7.”

            “Well then Dimension J19-squiggle-7 better be ready for us,” Summer balls her fists on the armrests. “Let’s go.”

            Leona banks the ship through the portal, and blinding green light swallows the ship to where I can barely see anything. Leona and Summer are just faint outlines braced against the back of their seats. When I blink my eyes again, we’ve come out the other side to what looks like the outskirts of some city. A sturdy brick house with a green aluminum shed sit on a crinkly brown lawn, covered in little patches of snow. Someone in a bright red scarf is bent down in front of the mailbox, peering inside, and my heart jumps into my throat when I see their blue hair.

            _Calm down, man, it’s not your Rick,_ I think. _It’s not **our** Rick. _

            “H-hey, can you land?” I tap the back of Leona’s headrest. “That’s a Rick, I-I’m pretty sure he could help us.”

            “ _¿Estás seguro?_ Doesn’t look like a Rick to me.”

            “I’m sure they don’t all look the same, Leona,” Summer pipes up. “There’s probably versions with, like, tentacles and three eyes and stuff.”

            I nod in agreement. Leona shrugs, lands the ship in the middle of the street, and unlocks the back door. Rick turns away from his mailbox and squints up at the cockpit, buckteeth poking out over his lower lip. His frown turns into a lopsided smile when he sees me pop out the doorway and jump down the steps to the street.

            “Hey! You’re a Morty, right? Oh gosh, I wasn’t expecting any visitors today! This is so cool!” he gushes when I walk up to him.

            I’m starting to wonder if he really is a Rick. I-I mean, he seems too _nice_ to be a Rick for one thing. Also, I’m pretty sure most Ricks wouldn’t be caught dead with a bowl cut.

            “Uh, y-yeah, that’s me. I’m a Morty. Earth dimension C-137,” I say, sticking my hand out for a handshake. Not-Rick grabs mine and shakes it eagerly—holy _crap_ , his hands are cold. H-how can he stand to be out here without gloves? I’m shivering my ass off out here!

            “Oh geez, you look like you’re cold. Here, take my lab coat.” Before I can protest, Not-Rick shrugs out of his lab coat and swings it around my shoulders with a smile. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine in just a shirt. Now you said you came from C-137?”

            “Uh-huh.”

            “You’re the one that had the really cool dad! Jerry!”

            I blink stupidly, not believing that I’d managed to find a dimension where someone thought Dad was _cool_ , or anything close to that. I’d have thought most Ricks would think their Jerrys are losers.

            “I was at your house when the Council Guard came in to arrest you and your Rick and investigate your place. Sorry about that whole mix-up, by the way.”

            “It’s-it’s fine, it’s whatever,” I shrug. “Hey, speakin’ of the Council—”

            “You wouldn’t happen to know how to contact them, would you?”

            I nearly jump out of the lab coat because holy shit, how did Leona manage to walk up behind me so quietly? She’s got her beat-up black motorcycle jacket on (which now that I know better, it’s probably our Rick’s jacket from years ago) and must have shaken her bun out before she came outside, because her dark red and gray hair is flapping behind her in the wind. Not-Rick’s eyes are practically bulging out of his skull. He turns to her as if in a daze, grinning.

            “ _Hello_ ,” he breathes. “Um, I don’t know—”

            “Leona Sánchez.”

            “ _Enchantée,_ ” Not-Rick says with a kiss of her hand.

            “ _El placer es todo mía_.” Leona’s eyes are throwing off sparks. “Haven’t met such a charming gentleman in quite a long time.”

            “Wow, um…oh my gosh.”

            Is this actually happening right now? Summer would be losing her shit if she was out here.

            “So yeah, uh,” I finally interject, “we’re looking for my Rick, and we think the Council of Ricks might be able to help us. Do you think you can, I dunno, call them or something?”

            “Wha? Oh, oh gee.” Not-Rick stops gawking at Leona long enough to turn back to me. “I-I dunno about that. I’m not exactly their favorite Rick, y’see. They-they think I’m stupid.”

            “You?” Leona arches an eyebrow. “You _are_ Rick Sánchez, no?”

            “O-of course—”

            “Then no Rick out there in this multiverse could possibly be stupid. _Obstinado_ , _quizás,_ and definitely lacking in _sentido común_ sometimes, but not stupid.” She sets a hand on Rick’s shoulder, and he follows the motion, biting down on his lower lip. “Perhaps you could direct us to the right coordinates? Morty and Summer know how to work my portal gun, but we have no clue where we’re going.”

            Rick breaks into an absolutely goofy smile. “Oh, sure! I remember the Council coordinates!”

            “ _Excelente. Ven conmigo_.” Leona turns back toward the ship, looks over her shoulder, and seriously _beckons_ to Rick. He stumbles over his feet at first trying to follow her, but I push past him and walk right up to her side.

            “Leona, w-what the hell are you doing?” I hiss. “He’s not _your_ Rick.”

            “ _Yo sé._ ”

            “Then _why are you flirting with this one_?”

            Leona comes to a halt, Not-Rick scuffing on the sidewalk behind her. She glances behind her before tugging me close and whispering right in my ear.

            “ _Porque todavía lo tengo, y voy a trabajarlo_ _._ ”

            I pull away from her, cringing, and follow the two of them back up into the ship. Summer is giving me this serious _what the fuck_ face that I’m seriously not in the mood to address right now, so I just snatch the portal gun out of her hands and start toying with the keypad again to occupy my hands.

            “W-wow, your ship is really cool, Leona!” I hear Rick exclaim from the cockpit.

            “ _Gracias_ ,” Leona replies. “Decommissioned from the Galactic Federation—”

            “Morty, what’s going on up there?” Summer hisses.

            I roll my eyes. “Leona’s trying to put the moves on Not-Rick.”

            “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

            “I really wish I was.”

            “Morty? Summer?” Leona calls. “Could you bring the portal gun up here, please? Rick thinks he knows the coordinates to the Council’s dimension.”

            “Dammit, he’s not _your_ Rick,” I growl, stomping off to the cockpit with Summer on my heels. Leona is casually kicked back in her pilot’s chair, and I’ve got the urge to smack that self-satisfied grin off of her face. Not-Rick tugs the portal gun out of my fist and peers at the keypad, frowning.

            “Hmm, this kinda looks like one of the old styles _I_ invented,” he muses, tapping his chin. “I lost it a really, really long time ago, though, and never found it again. Oh well. Let’s see, the Council’s dimension is K-686-Iota…I think.”

            Not-Rick types the coordinates into the keypad and fires a green portal out the windshield. “There! That should get us where we need to go!”

            “ _Perfecto_. I have the utmost faith in you,” Leona shoots a wink at Not-Rick that makes me want to gag and steers the ship through the portal…

            …right through the middle of a garage that looks eerily like mine. All I hear is screaming and the earsplitting grind of metal on concrete before the ship screeches to a stop, the windshield cracking into a thousand little spider webs. Oh shit, oh shit, oh _shit_.

            “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” I hear a familiar voice bellow from outside the ship. “By authority of the Guard of the Council of Ricks, I order you to step out of the vessel!”

            I hear the faintest moaning coming from under the ship, moaning that sounds an awful lot like mine. Oh great, not only did we crash-land into another dimension, but we had to go and hurt another one of me, too?

            “Up here!” Leona hisses, pointing at the ceiling. Not-Rick gives her a boost up so she can unlock the hatch, and she shimmies her way up through the hole and pulls him up behind her. Summer goes next, grabbing Not-Rick’s hand and getting tugged up. Once Summer is up, Not-Rick stretches his hand back down to me. I glare up at his dumb bucktoothed face for a few moments before accepting it. He pulls me up onto the roof, where I see Leona and Summer already have their hands raised in the air. They both have tattered clothes (Leona’s leather jacket somehow looks _less_ beat-up than before) and smudges on their cheeks, but otherwise look okay. Another portal has opened on the one garage wall that hasn’t been smashed to hell, and at least a dozen Council Guard members, some Ricks, some Mortys, are spilling out onto the concrete floor. A pair of Mortys duck under the ship and pull the moaning Morty out, his leg a bleeding, mangled mess.

            Great. Just fucking great.

            “Now,” the first Guard Rick commands, his overcoat almost glaringly white, “I want you to slide down off the roof, one at a time. Cooperate and we’ll take it easy on you.”

            “And if we don’t?” Leona asks with a quirked eyebrow.

            “Then we’ll hold you under arrest for contempt of the Guard in addition to your other charges.”

            “Whoa, whoa, hold up!” a second Guard Rick says. “Is that _Doofus Rick_ up there?”

            “For the last time, guys, I’m not a doofus!” Not-Rick replies.

            “Toss your damn portal gun down here and prove it.”

            Before Leona can protest, Doofus Rick pulls the portal gun out of his inside lab coat pocket and throws it down at the crowd of Council Guards. A Guard Morty snatches it out of the air and peers at it.

            “He entered the wrong coordinates for the Council dimension,” the Guard Morty mutters after a moment, pointing at the screen. “See, he typed in K-686-Iota—”

            “And he forgot the lambda,” a third Guard Rick replies, shaking his head. “Hey, _genius_ , you forgot the fucking lambda!”

            “It’s been a long time since I’ve had to go to the Citadel, okay?!” Doofus Rick shouts defensively. “And you guys keep changing the coordinates on me—”

            “The coordinates spell out COUNCIL, how fucking difficult is that?”

            “Can we _please_ try to keep it professional here?” the first Guard Rick sighs. “Seriously, though, if you don’t get off the roof, we will be forced to shoot. And these babies don’t fire just any old plasma, either,” he taps the sidearm holstered to his hip, “so if you’d like to keep your limbs attached to your body, I’d suggest you cooperate.”

            “Well,” Leona remarks, and to my surprise, she swings her body around and slides down the side of the ship on her butt. She lands neatly in front of the first Guard Rick, bends down, and pulls up her pants leg, revealing her prosthetic. “Lucky for you, one of my limbs has _already_ been blown off, so you’ll have to devote about 25% less energy to mutilating me into compliance.”

            I’ve never seen any Rick blush before in my life, but the Guard Rick gets noticeably pink across the cheeks as Leona leans closer to him.

            “Besides,” she adds in a much lower tone that I have to strain to hear, “you and I both know that the heat you’re packing is about as lethal as a potato gun. So save yourself the embarrassment and cuff me already.”

            The entire group of Council Guards turns to stare at her. Leona looks up and nods as if to say _you better get your asses down here_ , and I quickly lead the way, jumping halfway down to the ground. Summer looks like she doesn’t know whether to cry or yell when the metal handcuffs get clamped shut around her wrists. Doofus Rick just looks lost.

            “B-by order of the Council Guard and implied authority of the Council of Ricks, you are hereby placed under arrest for attempted vehicular manslaughter, unauthorized teleportation to a controlled dimension, and disorderly conduct,” the second Guard Rick recites. He shoots a look at Leona at that last line. “Now let’s move.”

 

**Summer**

            This is seriously the most surreal experience of my life. I’m being marched down the wide corridor of what looks like a ginormous futuristic cathedral with a high, sparkling ceiling by someone who looks identical to my little brother yet isn’t. His polished black boots clack hard on the floor in rhythm with the rest of the guards, and he keeps a gloved hand on my upper arm guiding me down the hall. Morty is actually on the other side of me, looking surprisingly calm about all of this. Then it hits me: he’s been here before, in handcuffs no less. When the Council Guard came thundering into the house that day during breakfast to arrest Grandpa Rick, they took Morty too. And Mom _still_ told me I had to go to school. So unfair.

            Leona is somewhere behind us, muttering a line of curses in Spanish. I can tell Morty is trying to pick apart the words and decode them in his head, even mouthing some of the stuff he doesn’t quite recognize. Something she blurts out to one of the guards makes Morty go completely red and hang his head.

            “What did she say?” I ask out of the corner of my mouth.

            “I-I don’t wanna repeat it.”

            “Oh, come on, it can’t have been that bad.”

            “Well, it was, trust me.”

            “Morty, I’m your big sister. I can handle it.”

            “Fine! She said ‘tighter, daddy’ when the guard choked up on her handcuffs. Okay?”

            “Hey!” the Guard Morty next to me barks. “Keep down the chit-chat over there!”

            I manage to turn my head just enough to mouth _what the hell_ back at Leona, who only responds with a wink. God, she’s so weird.

            We’re turned down another hallway, then another, until it finally opens up into a huge golden rotunda with a tall bench on the far side. I was so lost in my own thoughts while being marched along that I barely noticed who else was walking around in this building with us, but now I look around and see that it’s all _other Ricks and Mortys_ huddled into the rotunda, too _._ All different shapes and sizes and species, all dressed in outfits from different time periods and planets, but all undeniably the same pair of people. There’s a pirate Rick with a black three-point hat and a hook hand, talking with a Morty in a stained red captain’s jacket. A Morty with three eyes fiddles experimentally with his glasses while his Rick tugs a comb through hair even wilder and spikier than Grandpa’s. A pang goes off somewhere in my stomach when I see a Rick dressed exactly like ours kneeling down in front of a crying Morty in a purple shirt, offering him a can of soda and some tissues. It was so uncharacteristically _nice_. I can’t ever imagine Grandpa being that soft with either one of us.

            A group of six Ricks files in across the bench and settles down in tall golden chairs. Each one of them has the same blue hair Grandpa does, but styled in some of the most ridiculous ways possible. I almost want to giggle, but there are literally thousands of eyes staring at us right now. I don’t need to give them any more evidence that I’m a freak.

            “Council Guards, remove the handcuffs,” the Rick with the pointy soul patch commands. I feel the cuffs unsnap from around my wrist, and I immediately bring my hands back around in front of me, wiggling my fingers.

            “This is Riq IV, spokesperson for these convening of the Council of Ricks,” Soul Patch Rick continues. “At this time, the captured may provide testimony as a means to justify their actions. Whosoever wishes to speak, step forward and identify yourself.”

            I’m about to take the first step when Morty beats me to it.

 

**Morty**

            “H-Hi,” I say with a shaky wave. “I-I’m Morty? Earth dimension, uh, C-137.”

            “Morty C-137, the Council acknowledges your presence. You may continue.”

            “Um, yeah. So like six months ago—”

            “Wait, C-137?” the Rick with long blue hair interrupts. “You’re the Malcontent’s Morty?”

            “Uh…” _Of all the Ricks in the Central Finite Curve, you’re the malcontent! The rogue._ “Yeah. Yes, I am.”

            “We haven’t heard anything from that particular Rick in a long while,” the Rick next to Riq IV remarks. “Surprisingly little activity from that dimension.”

            “Yeah, that’s because he’s in _prison_ ,” I say emphatically.

            “He’s what?” Riq IV remarks, turning back to me.

            “My Rick was captured by the Galactic Federation in my dimension six months ago!” A bunch of murmuring weaves through the crowd behind me, but I ignore it. “But he recently escaped. I don’t know how, I don’t know with who—”

            “With _whom_ ,” the Rick with swirly hair corrects me.

            “Fine, yeah, with _whom._ Anyway, he’s gone. And I need your help to find him.”

            Riq IV leers down at me. “Why should we help you when your attempt to contact us nearly resulted in the death of a Council Guard member?”

            “That was an accident!” Summer shouts from behind me. “Ask Doofus Rick, he’ll tell you!”

            “Hey, hey, whoa!” Doofus Rick holds up his palms. “D-don’t go pinning this all on me, guys!”

            “Rick J19-Zeta-7, you _do_ have a history of making easily avoidable pilot errors,” Long-Haired Rick says. “That’s why the Council seized all of your flying vehicles for a probationary period of two years.”

            “H-h-how do you guys expect me to get any better if I can’t practice?”

            “ _Perdóname, señores_ ,” Leona speaks up, coming up to stand next to me. “May I speak?”

            “You may,” Riq IV replies with a raised eyebrow. “And you are…?”

            “Leona Ysabel Pérez Sánchez. Bioengineer by education, bounty hunter by trade. Earth dimension _no lo conozco y no me importa._ Oh,” she adds with a toss of her head, “I’m also Rick C-137’s wife.”

            The murmuring that bubbled up behind us earlier turns into a full-blown conversation among the crowd. Some start closing in on us to get a better look, but the Guard pushes them back with a wave of their guns. The Councilmembers share a glance of utter confusion and a few words before Riq IV waves his hands down to quiet everyone.

            “Ahem,” he clears his throat, “the Council of Ricks has no record of Rick C-137 being married.”

            “You just called him _El Descontento_ earlier,” Leona says matter-of-factly. “Did you really expect him to keep you up to speed on his personal details when you so clearly don’t wish to interact with him?”

            More murmuring from behind us. Riq IV looks completely out of sorts, tugging at his collar. “Well, uh…”

            “I’m not hearing any valid counterarguments.”

            “The Council still disinclines to agree with your, ah, assertion—”

            “But you’re not disagreeing with me, either.”

            “Ms. Sanchez, are you here to match wits with the Council, or do you actually have something of you wish to contribute to the testimony?” Long-Hair Rick asks with a roll of his eyes.

            “I’d match wits with the Council if they had any to begin with.”

            The crowd immediately bursts out laughing, Ricks and Mortys alike. I see a Rick in a pastel pink suit take his sunglasses off and wipe the tears out of his eyes, guffawing; the Morty next to him nearly chokes on his lollipop from giggling. If Leona had a self-satisfied smirk on her face earlier, it’s nothing compared to the one on her face now. The Councilmembers are all staring down at her, dumbstruck.

            “Silence. SILENCE!” Riq IV roars. “That’s enough of this fun and folderol! Ms. Sanchez, you have 15 seconds to say something that isn’t an insult and is of _substance_ to this Council—”  
            “Fine,” Leona says shortly. “You want something of substance? This poor boy standing next to me,” she jabs at me with her elbow, “and that poor girl over there,” she jerks her head, “have had no grandfather for far too long. We’re not sure where he is, but we were promised in good faith by _eso caballero_ _de allí_ ,” she nods at Doofus Rick, “that you would have the resources to help us find him. Obviously there has been some kind of mistake.”

            “Now hold on—”

            “No, _you_ hold on. I’m not finished,” Leona says coldly. “While your Council may have the resources, what you lack is the interest. I know you all aren’t clones of _mi esposo_ , but what I cannot conceive is your lack of compassion for two children who simply want to reunite with family.” She squeezes her eyes shut and continues, a single tear snaking down their cheek. “I may have had to live without him for nearly 20 years, but that doesn’t mean they should have to.”

            A collective ‘aaaawww’ rises up from the crowd. A couple of the Councilmembers are blinking back tears of their own. Riq IV pulls a handkerchief out from his glove and dabs at his eyes before he speaks again.

            “A-All right. All right. The Council will agree to help you in your search in exchange for your full cooperation with us while you remain in the Citadel. Guards, please escort these three to a vacant apartment unit close to the private Council chambers so we can meet with them later.”

            A couple of Guard Ricks and Mortys press Summer in with Leona and I and march us back out to the hallway we came in through, not bothering to put us in handcuffs this time. I’m smiling so hard my cheeks hurt. We’re gonna get _help_. Leona had to twist the Council’s arm with some well-times waterworks, but we’re finally gonna get help in finding Rick. We’re that much closer to seeing him again.

            I’m so caught up in happiness that I don’t even notice a tiny brown hand grabbing around my upper arm and tugging me down a dark corridor until it’s too late to yell for help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You didn't think I'd leave you hang forever, did ya?
> 
> I was so excited to introduce Doofus Rick this chapter. I've always thought he was a really sweet character, and I do hope they choose to bring him back in the show later. Sadly, this is probably his only appearance in this fic unless I can think of a reason to bring him back (and I don't just bring characters back for no good reason, it's gotta make sense plot-wise). 
> 
> Leona gives absolutely zero fucks. But you knew that already.
> 
> Initially Summer was going to talk a lot more in front of the Council, but the chapter was getting insanely long as it was, so I needed to cut her lines. Don't worry, we'll get back to her soon.
> 
> Ooh, I wonder who's got Morty this time? He's really gotta be more observant of his surroundings.


	17. Morticia's Lab

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's like looking in a funhouse mirror, broh! A really freaky one...

**Morticia**

            Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I can’t believe it! He’s _here_. He’s actually here in the Citadel and I managed to grab his hand and snatch him away and we are _here_ , right now, running through this hallway like our lives depend on it but really I’m just so excited that he’s here. I’ve never studied an anomaly that wasn’t manufactured before. Grandpa won’t let me. Claims it’s too dangerous, but what does he know?

            God, he’s actually _here_!

            _Calm down, calm down, calm down_ , I coach myself. _You’ve probably really freaked him out_. I’m sure I did, because I’ve been ignoring his protests and his tugging on my arm to maybe suggest slowing down, but we’re almost at the lab. He can make it another 100 feet without passing out. Pretty sure he can, anyway.

            I slap my free hand on the biometric scanner just outside the lab, and the door parts open for us. I drag him inside before the door slams shut again, finally letting him go. He bends down and grabs his knees, panting like he’s just run three marathons back-to-back. Jeez, and I thought I needed to exercise more.

            “Y-y’know,” Morty stammers out, “I-I-I really gotta start being a little more aware of what’s goin’ on around me. Every time I get grabbed out of nowhere, I seem to g-get in more trouble.”

            “I promise you’re not in trouble. I just want to talk to you.”

            “Yeah, well—” he finally takes a deep breath and looks up at me. His eyebrows push together so hard they almost knit into one. “Hold on. A-are you…me?”

            “Nope,” I reply, reaching up to adjust my headband.

            “Then what—who are you? I mean, you’ve got curly hair, and it’s brown like mine. Your skin’s a little darker, but,” he finishes his thought with a shrug. “And you’re, I dunno, kinda scrawny for a girl?”

            “Hey, puberty hasn’t totally kicked in for me yet, okay?” I shoot him a pointed look. “My name’s Morticia, by the way. Morticia Sanchez.”

            “S-Sanchez?”

            “Yeah.” I finally get my headband back where I want it and reach over to the spinning chair where my lab coat is, shrugging it on. “Is that a weird name in your home dimension or something?”

            “No. It’s just…if you’re me, then that means you’ve got a Rick. And my last name is Smith, so shouldn’t your last name be Smith, too?” The way his face scrunches up while puzzling this out is kinda cute.

            “Just because there’s a Rick and a Morty in every conceivable dimension of the multiverse doesn’t mean they’re all the same, you know.” I glance over my shoulder at the computer screen behind me to see if any messages popped up while I was out. “Like me. My mom’s womb was 32.54 degrees Fahrenheit warmer during gastrulation, and my dad’s sperm gave me another X chromosome instead of a Y. So here I am.”

            “Ah. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.” Morty straightens up and looks around, his eyes still wide. “Oh, wow, so is this your Rick’s—”

            “It’s my lab.”

            “Sorry, I-I didn’t…I mean, I didn’t mean to imply you’re not-not _smart_ enough or anything—”

            I wave my hand dismissively. “It’s fine. You’ve clearly been to the Citadel before, but not long enough to interact with many Mortys outside your dimension. Makes sense, given who you have for a Rick. Besides, I don’t go running around telling everyone about my lab, ‘cause otherwise it wouldn’t be a _secret_ lab. Got it?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Good.” I turn and flick my eyes over to the giant computer monitor embedded in the wall behind us. No new messages while I stepped out. Cool. Morty finally stops his panting and straightens up, so I figure it’s safe to continue the conversation. “So…you’re looking for your Rick, huh?”

            “How did you—”

            “Overhead speakers,” I cut in, pointing at the darkened ceiling where they’re mounted. “Direct mike feed into the main atrium. The Council might bug the crap out of me, but I do need to know _some_ of what’s going on, y’know?”

            Morty blinks at me, dumbfounded, then shrugs. He does a lot of shrugging, I can tell. His shirt is all bunched up and puckered at the shoulder seams. “Y-yeah,” he replies after a pause. “Yeah, I’m looking for my Rick.”

            “What if I told you I can help you find him faster?”

            His eyes widen. “Faster than the Council?”

            “The Council isn’t going to look in the same places I am.” I walk over to the control panel underneath the monitor, Morty close on my heels. “Oh, don’t get me wrong—they’ll find him _eventually_. But you can bet that despite that big commotion you just caused in the atrium, they’ll drag their feet. They won’t put their top investigators on the job. Fourth-tier, maybe third-tier if you’re lucky. And they’ll let them take breaks whenever they want and watch silly cat videos and—”

            “The Council is a bunch of dicks.”

            “Pretty much.”

            “But…sorry, how are _you_ gonna help me? Again, not saying you’re not smart enough—”

            “—you kinda are—”

            “—seriously, how can a Morty, er, Morticia, outsmart the Council?”

            I cross my arms. “Do you know about the Central Finite Curve?”

            “Um…” Morty hums, rubbing his arm absently. “I-I remember one of the Council Ricks telling my Rick something the first time we were here in the Citadel. Something about how my Rick was the rogue in the Central Finite Curve.”

            “Right, but do you know what it is?”

            Morty shakes its head.

            “Figures. The Council doesn’t like to explain themselves,” I roll my eyes. “Makes them too ‘accessible’ or something like that. Okay, I’ll explain it to you.”

            I get into my system files and bring up the massive map of the CFC. A soft silver arc stretches across the screen on a deep blue background; white pinpoints pop up in clusters along the line, while some scatter out across a greater distance. Morty shuffles back a few steps to take it all in.

            “ _This_ is the Central Finite Curve. Well, as good a representation as anyone in the Citadel can come up with given there’s an infinite number of dimensions,” I explain. “Anyway, the Central Finite Curve is the composite of all dimensions the Council has deemed to be ‘valuable’.”

            “What makes a dimension valuable?” Morty asks.

            “Any number of things. Environment, availability of unique resources, lax governmental oversight. The biggest factor is whether a Rick can easily slip into a dimension and make a new life there. The fewer consequences there are to dimension-hopping, the more valuable a dimension is, at least in the Council’s eyes.”

            Morty squirms, swallows. Basically looks super uncomfortable with what I just said. Instead of confronting him with a question, I tip my head at him wordlessly, hoping he’ll get the idea. He meets my gaze after a while, still nervous.

            “Sorry, it’s just that…well, me and Rick sort of did that already. We, ah, it’s Rick’s fault, honestly, he made the stupid love potion in the first place and he really didn’t have to, but we basically wrecked our home dimension, went to another one where our alternate selves died in a freak accident and, ah, took their places. I…I had to bury my own body.”

            He expects me to be shocked by this. Like, it’s screwed up on so many levels, I get it. I feel like I should put an arm around his shoulder, offer him some kind of comfort. The truth is, though, I’ve heard of so many things that were far, far worse. I’ve _seen_ far worse things. Mortys mutilated, screeching in pain with smoking hair and eyes blown wide with horrors they could never unsee. Some Ricks, too, bleeding out beyond any recovery the infirmary could provide. And the Council hands out those stupid replacement vouchers like popcorn, and _ugh_. It’s sick that Morty’s story doesn’t turn my stomach like it should, but that’s sadly what I’ve come to. You have to be a little numb to make it in the Citadel. To live what I’ve lived through.

            “I’m sorry,” I manage to get out. Can he tell how hollow that is, how many times I’ve had to say those words? “You shouldn’t have had to go through that.”

            He doesn’t say anything in response, simply goes back to awkwardly rubbing his arm. Maybe that’s for the best? I don’t know. All I know is I have a lot to explain to him on borrowed time. I clear my throat and continue. “So, as you can probably guess, the Council is only gonna invest its time in looking at all of those clusters you see in the Curve, a.k.a. those dimensions with the most value to them. But that’s not where they should be looking.”

            “How do you know?”

            “Because anyone who’s smart enough to not only break your Rick out of prison but keep him subdued to the point where he couldn’t escape would know where the Council would look. They’d know how to evade detection and keep your Rick out of the Council’s radar. Which tells me,” I grab my laser pointer out of my pocket (hey, any self-respecting nerd should have one) and draw circles around the pinpoints near the ends of the arc, “that your Rick is more likely to be out here, in the outliers. I doubt whoever it is would have enough guts to try going outside the Curve. For one thing, it’d take an awful lot of re-channeling and bending the fabric of space-time, and the Council could totally pick up on that.”

            Morty nods along as I continue. “Also, assuming your Rick got out of prison by himself—”

            “He didn’t.”

            “How do you know?”

 

            “Because there’s no way he could have! I spent months researching the prison where he was locked up. _Months,_ Morticia! Also, Leona has it on really good authority that the Federation knows someone broke him out!”

            “All right, all right! Forget what I was gonna say!” I throw my hands up. “If you trust Leona that much—”

            “I do.” The fierceness in Morty’s eyes is unsettling, a fire that’s only just starting to burn. “She might have screwed me and Summer over big time, but she’s kept me alive for…for however long I’ve been up in space. And like, yeah, maybe I shouldn’t trust her. But I gotta think deep down she cares about me, y’know? She’s not Rick. Leona cares about people and doesn’t throw them away.”

            The fire in his eyes simmers down a bit, and he crosses his arms over his chest. Do we all really look that small when we curl in on ourselves? Is that how our Ricks see us, so tiny, so vulnerable?

            “Okay,” I say, trying to break the silence. “You trust Leona, so I’ll trust her, too. There’s someone out there who bailed your Rick out and has kept him all this time. Rick didn’t break out on his own.”

            “Yeah, but who took him?”

            Oh, I have an idea. But I’m not sure Morty will like hearing it. “I…have a theory,” I breathe out. “You remember Evil Rick, right? The one who framed your Rick for killing so many other Ricks?”

            Morty shudders and nods. I can relate—not a pleasant memory. “Is it him?”

            “Not exactly. You see, I was in the lair when you were in there, Morty. When Evil Morty shoved you into the holding pen with all the other Mortys, I was in there, way in the back. I watched them hail you as the One True Morty, and I was in the crowd when you freed us. Actually, I hung back in the pen for a while instead of destroying the lair. I didn’t see the point in rioting.”

            “Okay, but what—”

            “Evil Rick wasn’t real. He was being controlled by his Morty through the eyepatch.”

            “Through the—do you even hear what you’re saying right now? Do you hear how crazy this sounds?”

            “I saw it, Morty!” My hands ball into fists. “I snuck out of the pen a couple times at night, because I was one of the smart Mortys who could figure out the door. I’d get out to the lab where Evil Morty worked, and I watched him operate on his Rick. There was a receiver chip lodged inside Rick’s brain, and the transmitter was stuck on the back of the eyepatch. Evil Morty plugged the transmitter into some cords under his eyeball and controlled his Rick through blinking. His eyeball wasn’t real, either. It’s bionic. I know, ‘cause I saw him work on that one night.”

            That was the night he almost caught me. Usually I hid under the workbench he had a cloth draped over and peeked out from behind it, but I couldn’t get there that night. Evil Morty was pacing across his lab, mumbling and cursing under his breath as he hunted for tools, so I couldn’t slip around the corner and under the workbench. Just when I thought I could make a dive for it, he turned around. He stared at where I was, one good eye and one gaping socket crusted with old blood, his bionic eye a white orb in his hand. _God,_ that’s a sight I can’t forget. The second he turned back to his work, I bolted, and I never left the pen again after that. Not until Morty showed up, that is.

            “The Council intervened and rounded us up,” I continue. “After that, I didn’t see Evil Morty again. My guess is he gave up on trying to hang around and save his Rick, so he ditched his transmitter and decided to go along with the crowd of Mortys, play dumb. A little while after we were brought to the Citadel, a Morty supposedly disappeared. The Council investigated, but he was never found.”

            “Okay, that’s great and all, but what does that Morty want to do with my Rick?”

            I shrug. “Who knows? He probably doesn’t care that it’s specifically _your_ Rick, Morty. We know from before that he doesn’t really care about collateral damage.”

            “This is all just your theory, though, right? I mean, it _could_ be this Evil Morty, or it could be someone or something else entirely. It doesn’t have to be him.”

            “You’re…you’re right.” _Conjecture without basis is speculation, Tish,_ Grandpa says in my head. _Don’t let your imagination run away too far._ But this isn’t science. This isn’t some tightly controlled experiment with variables that can be neatly quantified. Stranger things have happened across the multiverse, things that couldn’t be explained by prior understanding. Even the combined brainpower of every Rick in the Citadel couldn’t predict absolutely every outcome that could ever occur. If any Morty was smart enough to bail out of the Citadel and not get caught, it’d be Evil Morty. What his plans are for Rick C-137 is anyone’s guess, and I’m not willing to venture into that territory. Potential nightmare fuel, honestly.

            “Who took him doesn’t really matter right now.” I click out of the CFC map and bring up the Citadel’s Database of Ricks. Why Grandpa clicks the ‘remember me’ button for his login credentials is beyond me, but he doesn’t care what I look at so long as I don’t ring any alarm bells with my search activity. “What does matter is finding your Rick as fast as possible. The Council will equip you with a ship and whatever other weapons and supplies you need, but that won’t matter without a destination.”

            Despite all his pissing and moaning about the Citadel, Rick C-137 _does_ have a DNA sample on file, his genotype spelled out in binary code. It’s an old sample, but unless he took a trip to some planet with chemicals that drastically altered his genetic makeup (highly unlikely, those planets are some of the CFC outliers for a reason), it should still work. I drag and drop it into the page with the CFC map, hit the search function.

            “Range: all dimensions excluding A-001-Alpha to W-999-Zeta. Aaaaaaaaaaaand search!” I say, smashing the Enter button with perhaps more glee than necessary.

            “ _Estimated time to results: 15 minutes,_ ” the computer replied coolly.

            “Man, fifteen minutes? What, do you have a slow computer or something?” Morty asks, half a smirk on his face.

            “You underestimate just how many dimensions have to be analyzed even with the exclusions, Morty. My computer is among the fastest in the Citadel, but it doesn’t work instantaneously.”

            “Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I guess not.”

            We watch the computer screen together for a while, the progress bar inching across our line of vision as each possible dimension is analyzed. It still boggles my mind just how _vast_ it all is, and how the Ricks navigate the multiverse with such ease, like concert pianist skimming over the keys of the cosmos. Granted, some of them have to be liquored up to do it, but that’s only so their minds don’t race with every possible situation and outcome. At least that’s what Grandpa Rick tells me. He’s one of the rare ones that doesn’t drink. Says there’s no point. Whatever problems you avoid by drinking will still be there when you sober up, so it’s better to focus on them with all cylinders firing. Maybe he’s supposed to tell me that so I don’t become a corrupted youth. Ha.

            I wonder if I’d travel the multiverse to find my Rick. I suppose I’d kind of have to—he saved me first. Gave me a home when I had none. Stepped in as my grandfather when no one else in my life could give two shits about me. I took on his last name so I could have some sense of belonging, and you shouldn’t make yourself belong to _people_ , I know, but I needed some kind of anchor. Yet this Morty beside me, with no anchor, is out on a madcap adventure with his sister and grandmother (Seriously, C-137 got hitched? Incredible _._ ) to find his Rick.

            Sometimes I heard Evil Morty talking to himself while he worked in his lab, unaware I was watching. He had this little mantra: _Ricks don’t care about their Mortys._ He underestimated how many Mortys feel ambivalent toward their Ricks. Once we find out we’re disposable, we tend to go one of two ways: either we try to endear ourselves to Ricks twice as hard, or we stop giving a fuck. Relatively few try to rebel, lash out at the Council or any other Rick they can sink their teeth into. Fewer still end up like me, with a Rick that actually cares back.

            Morty C-137 doesn’t know he’s not the original Morty for his Rick. He doesn’t know that around the Citadel, he has a reputation as an anomaly. Most Ricks don’t care for their replacement Mortys, but Rick C-137? He loves his Morty. Came super close to fading into a pocket of asynchronous oblivion for him. Willfully chose to stop dimension-hopping to settle down with his family, and for whatever reason, chose to send his family to safety while being hauled off to prison (Did you really think the Council was surprised to hear he got booked? Fat chance.). And Morty doesn’t _know._

            Should I tell him?

            _What’s the point?_ I ask myself. _Do you really want to be responsible for killing the determination his eyes? And does it really matter? If we can all be swapped out and interchanged like light bulbs, doesn’t it matter more that we find meaning in the—_

“TISH!”

            Both Morty and I whip around. Grandpa stands in the doorway, laser cutter in hand, his face a mixture of pissed off and relieved. Aw, damn, he ruined my perfectly good titanium alloy door, too!

            “Oh geez, Tish, _you_ went and nabbed him?” he says, gesturing to Morty with the laser cutter. “D’you know the Guard’s been on a wild goose chase for this kid for the past 45 minutes?!”

            “Quit exaggerating, Grandpa. We’ve only been here for 38 minutes,” I sass back.

            Grandpa shoots me a look, pinches the bridge of his nose. “What the hell am I gonna do with you?”

            “Hopefully continue to nurture and develop my intellect so we can continue having this high-quality banter that you know you love to have with me.”

            Grandpa sighs. I flash a toothy grin. Morty looks extra bewildered.

            “He’s in here, he’s in here!” Three Guard Ricks scuff to a halt outside the freshly cut door, laser rifles in hand. “He _is_ in here, right?” one of them asks.

            “Yeah, yeah, he’s in here.” Grandpa waves them inside, and they swarm around Morty, slinging their rifles onto their backs. Morty panics and ducks. One of the Guards tugs him to his feet, rolling his eyes.

            “You’re not in trouble, C-137,” the Guard Rick says. “We just need to escort you back to your assigned apartment unit. You gave your traveling companions quite a fright when you disappeared.”

            “They’re my sister and grandmother, you idiot, not my ‘traveling companions’. Geez, I give a shit about them,” Morty snaps. “Don’t be so frickin’ impersonal.”

            Ooh, he’s got a little spice in him after all.

            The Guard Ricks shepherd him out of my lab with me following close behind. They’re almost totally out the door when Morty turns to look over his shoulder, eyes wide.

            “Wait, Morticia! Wait! How are you gonna tell me what you found out?”

            “I’ll find you!” I call after him, hanging partly out of the doorway. “The Citadel’s big, but I know it like the freckles on the back of my hand! No problem!”

            “Okay!” He sounds unsure, but then again, I would be too if I were in his shoes.

            “And just what were you going to find out for him?” Grandpa asks me, arms crossed over his chest.

            I do the crossed-arms pose to mirror him. “I’m helping him find his Rick.”

            “The Council is going to—”

            “The Council isn’t gonna do _shit_ , Grandpa! You _know_ that. They’re gonna make him sit on his butt in his apartment while the technicians sit on their butts and won’t lift a finger—”

            “Not everyone is out to get him, Tish! Not everyone is out to get you!”

            I stare at Grandpa hard and drop my arms to my sides. After a moment, he rakes a hand through his hair and exhales.

            “Sorry. Tish, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said—”

            “No, no, you’re right, Grandpa. But you also know I’m right, on some level, anyway. The Council doesn’t move fast, and Rick C-137 has been a thorn in their side for ages. All I wanted to do was help Morty out a little more.” I close my eyes. “I don’t want him to be like I was. Alone.”

            Grandpa steps toward me, arms outstretched for a hug. I lean into his chest, feeling too lazy and also still a little too annoyed to hug back. He understands, though. He always understands.

            “I know you don’t, Tish. You’re a major bleeding heart. Some assholes might think that’s a liability, but that’s part of what makes you so damn strong. You can’t save everyone, though. You can’t help everyone.”

            That’s where you’re wrong, Grandpa. I can’t help everyone, but I can help someone. And I will help you, Morty. Somehow, some way, I will help you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's back. Revived. Risen from the ashes. Sort of like a certain cybernetic avian alien we've all come to know and love. 
> 
> Seriously, I'm sorry I haven't updated in so long. I got wrapped up in another project for another fandom, and I sort of jumped fandoms during the R&M hiatus, and Real Life Stuff also got in the way of my writing for fun. There were several times I thought about posting an A/N saying this story would be abandoned, that you'd have to imagine how it all ends for yourself. But I never really wanted to let this story go, and apparently you all didn't either. Every few days I'd get a notification that someone left kudos, and every blue moon I'd get a comment. It was those kudos and comments that encouraged me to come back. So thank you for caring, and for showing that you care.
> 
> Not sure if this will be wrapped up before the rest of Season 3 airs, but we'll see. Don't you worry, though. You will get an ending. 
> 
> On another note, I have been dying to write Morticia's character since I first saw her in Pocket Mortys.


	18. Across the Multiverse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leona gets domestic and deep, broh.

**Leona**

“How can you make pancakes at a time like this?”

“I find it relaxing,” I tell Summer, spooning the batter onto the hot griddle. It’s been so long since I’ve had ingredients from Earth to use, and this kitchen is stocked full of them. I’d almost forgotten that chicken eggs don’t have wayward tentacles in the yolks that you need to pick out before beating them.

“Morty is missing!”

“He can’t have gone far. The Council will find him.”

“You’re being way too calm about this.”

I turn away from the stove to face Summer. She’s sitting at the island, tearing the corners off of a napkin one bit of paper at a time, worrying her lip. After a moment, she notices I’m watching her and stops, brushing the pile of napkin scraps off to the side sheepishly.

“I understand you’re nervous—”

“He’s _missing_ , Leona!”

“I _understand_. But there is no reason to turn yourself inside out about it. Morty wouldn’t bail on the mission now— _mierda._ ” The pancakes are bubbling hard behind me. I poke at the edges with my spatula to keep them in vaguely circular shape, then turn back to Summer. “Anyway, where would he go? He’s only been here once before, right?”

Summer shrugs. “I guess.”

“Then they’ll find whoever took him and bring him back. This place is enormous, but not infinite.”

“Yeah…”

“Look, _nieta._ ” That word still feels weird in my mouth. “If you have a problem and there’s something you can do about it, don’t worry about it. But if you have a problem, and there’s nothing you can do about it? Don’t worry about it.”

“So what you’re saying is don’t worry about anything ever.”

“What I’m saying is worrying is a pointless waste of energy. Channel your efforts into doing something constructive instead.” Time to flip the pancakes. “Eventually you’ll get to a point where you either can fix the problem yourself, or it’s fixed itself.”

“Or you can call someone to help you.”

“True. But who are you going to call, Summer? If you’ve got a phone with intra-galactic coverage, I want to know about it _._ ”

Summer flops down on her hands, resigned. The pancakes finish frying to a soft brown, so I scoop them onto a plate with a big pat of butter on top (real butter, _Dios_ , it’s been years since I’ve had that) and slide them across the island to her.

“You want brown sugar or syrup, you’ll have to get those yourself. I’m sure they’re around here somewhere,” I say, waving my spatula toward the cabinets.

“Fine.” The barstool scrapes across the floor as Summer hops down and comes around the island. She shuffles right in next to me and reaches up into the cupboard, rummaging around.

“Keep your hips on _your_ side of the kitchen, _por favor,_ ” I joke, nudging her in the side.

“Hey! I got my mom’s hips, and she got them from you!” Summer hip-checks me back.

 “ _Falso._ Those came from my husband. You might not think so, because he’s so skinny, but believe me. Ricardo can _move_.” Even though my arthritis is telling me everything about this is a bad idea, I start to do a rusty imitation of the cha-cha-cha. Summer doubles over in laughter and joins in after a bit, trying to match me step for step.

 “Grandpa can still move like this, you know,” she says as she tries to do a twirl and nearly loses balance. “Well, not exactly like this, but he can still dance. He threw a house party when my parents were gone, invited a bunch of aliens—”

“Sounds exactly like him.” Ricardo wanted to do that a few times when Beth was young and away at summer camp, but I put my foot down. Unless he could produce a cleaner that would guarantee every glop of extraterrestrial slime would be banished from the tile grout, no way. So he kept his partying relegated to the outer reaches of far-flung galaxies, and I got to keep a clean house. Everyone won.

“—then we almost got arrested and went to time prison—”

“ _Ahem_.” Three hard knocks against the doorframe of the apartment. “Ms. Sánchez? We found your Morty.”

I hadn’t even noticed the front door had slid open, but there stands a pair of Ricks (it’s so strange that there are multiples of him—I’ve only ever known _my_ Rick) along with our wide-eyed and unruffled Morty, tugging at the hem of his shirt.

“Turns out one of our more enterprising Mortys decided they needed to take a little detour in the Citadel,” one of the Ricks explained, nudging Morty forward into the apartment. “We’re terribly sorry about the mix-up.”

“Are you okay, Morty?” I wipe my hands on my apron and walk over to meet him. He’s not looking at anyone, eyes roaming around the sparsely decorated living room. “You seem off.”

“ _Necesito café,_ ” he replies with a quick glance up to me.

Ah. “ _¿Un azucar o dos?_ ”

“ _Tres. Con crema._ ”

Worse than I expected.   

“Come inside, Morty. We’ll get you some coffee to wake up.” I look up at the Ricks. “Thank you for bringing him back.” They respond with curt nods and walk away, the apartment door sliding shut behind them.

“Where were you?” Summer asks when Morty reaches the kitchen island and hops up on the barstool next to her.

“In the Citadel, like those Ricks said,” Morty mumbles.

“You could have at least told us you were going on a side trip.”

“Let it go, Summer,” I say as Morty presses his palms against his eyes. “Clearly he doesn’t want to talk about it right now. Give him time.”

“Why do _I_ have to let it go?” Summer flips the bottle of maple syrup she must have found in the cabinets upside down and squeezes it. A long, thick trail of syrup comes out in an angry squelch. “Why can’t anyone in this family talk about anything?”

“I ran into a girl version of me and she took me to her secret lab to tell me where Rick probably is, okay?!” Morty blurts. “Is that enough talking for you?”

His outburst stuns everyone into silence. Even the griddle on the stovetop seems to sizzle more quietly. We cut glances at each other, unsure of who should dare to talk first.

“Okay, that is a lot to unpack,” Summer finally remarks with a stab at her pancakes. “Like, seriously. Tons of stuff to go through there.”

“We’re not going through anything on empty stomachs, you two, so eat up.” I slide a plate of pancakes toward Morty, who tucks in hungrily and grabs the bottle of syrup from Summer. Only when I turn toward the coffee maker to pour out cups for myself and Morty do I realize what I’d just done. I’d offered to help my grandchildren sort through whatever emotional problems they were having, but only after I’d fed them.

_Dios. Yo soy una abuela._

 

****

The Council takes plenty of time to investigate where Rick is, exactly as Morty told us they would. I’d call them assholes, except I remember that my Ricardo behaved much the same way when he was on the verge of a great discovery. I suppose some personality traits really are universal. Or multiversal, as the case may be.

They haul my ship back into the Citadel a couple days after we arrived. I’m allowed inside to grab any of my personal items that I want, but apparently they need to keep it in the hangar so they can determine whether it’s more effective for them to outfit my ship with a tracking system for when we go to find Rick or if they should simply loan us a Citadel vessel.

“I already know what your answer is going to be,” I tell one of the mechanic Ricks when we go to clean out the ship. Summer and Morty are loading the pillows and kitchen utensils onto a floating cart; the box under my arm is full of beaded curtain strands and the contents of my locker. “Can we cut to the chase and just say I’m going to be flying one of your ships on the mission? You want to snoop around _my_ ship and determine if any big bad outside government tracked me and is coming to infiltrate your precious Citadel.”

“Look, lady, I’m a mechanic. I don’t get involved in the politics of who’s flying what anywhere in this damned multiverse, and frankly I don’t care.” This Rick wipes his hand on a greasy rag hanging out of his stained blue coveralls. “All I’m here to do is inspect shit and fix shit. That’s all.”

He has tiny crescent moons of blue around the bottoms of his dark irises, and a dusting of inexplicable freckles on one corner of his downturned mouth. Why I’m noticing these details, I don’t know. Ricardo got a deeper tan in the summer or when he’d been visiting a particularly sunny planet, but he never freckled. He had beauty marks instead that dotted his body.

 Jesus, I’m reminiscing about my long-lost husband in the middle of a hangar surrounded by at least twenty of his doppelgangers. What is wrong with me?

I try to keep my mind as far away from Ricardo as possible over the next few days. It’s strange, I know, to do such a thing when I’m closer than ever to finding him. But I’d trained myself to do that over the course of looking for him so I wouldn’t become obsessed. Maybe I already crossed that threshold the moment I stepped through the portal all those years ago. _Yo no sé._ It’s easier if I focus on reconnecting him with Morty and Summer than entertaining any thoughts of what he wants to do with me. If he wants anything to do with me.

Would Ricardo even remember me?

Instead, I keep myself busy. Morty has a vest that needs finishing, and the flash of a crochet hook in my hand has always been a welcome distraction. Loop and join, loop and join, yarn over the hook and pull it all through. I crochet all through the first night Morty is back, not realizing that I hadn’t slept until I hear Summer clattering around in the kitchen for breakfast. To avoid a potential jealousy fit from Summer, I leave the vest on Morty’s bed along with a note when he’s in the shower. He of course wears it at the dinner table that night.

“Nice vest, _Marty_ ,” Summer snickers over the broccoli. (I had some serious doubts about cooking broccoli, due to a mildly traumatic experience I had when I first arrived in outer space involving a group of tiny, screaming green tree people. I should get an award for this dinner.)

“O-Orange looks good on me! Leona says so!” Morty says defensively. He blinks at me, unsure. “I-it brings out the highlights in my hair.”

“Indeed it does,” I smile. “It will protect from bullets, _and_ it’s fashionable.”

Summer snorts. “Yeah, fashionable for 1985.”

“Zip it, or you might find one on _your_ bed, _nieta_.” I point my forkful of pasta at Summer. She shudders and turns back to her food. Maybe I should make her something, but at this point, I barely know her. We barely know each other, and not for lack of trying on my part. I’ve given up on the kindly grandmother routine to earn her trust. She’ll have to come to me.

There isn’t much to do to pass the time around here. Watching Citadel TV is unnerving since all of the shows are acted out mostly by Mortys in bad wigs and makeup; anything vaguely interesting to me has an all-Rick cast, and that’s not a road I want to go down at the moment. Most of the reading material in the apartment is Citadel-related—I do learn the rather fascinating history of how the Citadel was formed by the Council decades ago, and how they reached out to other dimensions seeking new members. I nap more than I have in ages.

Morty spends a lot of time drawing in the sketchbook I bought for him a while back. I peek over his shoulder a few times to see what he’s doing. A lot of his sketches are creatures we saw together on our adventures, some are from his past adventures with Rick. There’s a handful of thumbnails of Summer, and a full-page profile portrait of me that I don’t think I was meant to see. His best work is technical drawings of the corridors and atriums in the Citadel, all high glass arches and neatly tiled walls. When he grows up, he’ll have a hell of a future as an architect or interior designer if he wants.

Summer, on the other hand, seems a bit lost. Morty told me a while back that she was practically glued to her smartphone back on Earth, which explains the blank stares and twitchy thumbs. Eventually I do sit her down and teach her how to play rummy, which somehow turns into us playing aggressive sudden death Texas Hold ‘Em where Morty is the dealer. Summer has a hell of a poker face, and she gambles recklessly at first until she gets a handle on the flow of the cards. The hands are meaningless—we bet with cheap plastic chips, and the only winnings are bragging rights until the next hand is dealt. Still, it makes her smile for a bit, as does homemade cooking.

We eat, we play, we tease and talk, we doze in the living room until it seems like the appropriate time to turn in for the night. We fall into a pattern of domesticity. I get brief flashes back to when Beth was young and Rick was home in between his trips when we would all clean up the kitchen together, or when Rick and I would stand in the doorway and watch Beth sleep in her too-big bed surrounded by an army of stuffed animals. All of this feels…normal.

I’d forgotten what it felt like to be normal.

****

Normal can never last, though. Every day two Citadel Ricks would come with a brief status report printed for our records—I have a stack of eleven reports that all say some flouncy variation of _we’re working on it_ sitting at the other end of the dinner table. On day twelve, though, three Ricks come, one of them with slicked-back hair and wire-framed glasses perched on his crooked nose.

“We’ve found him,” this Rick tells me, and he beckons for Morty and Summer to follow as well.

We march down the hallways in silence. One guard behind Morty, Summer, and I, one in front of us. Rick with the glasses leads us all like a bureaucratic drum major (I assume he accidentally sat on his baton with how upright he is) toward a set of giant metallic blue doors that I suppose we’re meant to be impressed by and unlocks it with the palm and retina scanner. A smile runs across my face thinking of the scanners back in the Gloppydrop Penitentiary. Amazing how the Federation never tracked me, never got a whiff of my tailwind. Our journey here could have been a lot more complicated if they did.

“Our investigation has isolated Rick C-137 to a minute pocket of space just outside the reaches of the Central Finite Curve,” Rick explains as he leads us into a major command center. Rows and rows of Ricks hunch over computer banks, typing away or chattering into headsets. A few Mortys run back and forth with cups of coffee and stacks of paper, looking every bit like harried office pages. I recognize a few of the Council members sitting in front of the massive screen dominating the wall facing us.

“I knew it. Morticia was right,” I hear Morty mutter.

“Huh? What did you say?” Summer asks.

“Enough with the chit-chat!” Glasses Rick glares over his shoulder. “We want to get the three of you dispatched ASAP so you can recover your Rick and get out of our hair.”

“Nice to know we have your full support,” I snark. “Way to give us confidence on our mission.”

Glasses Rick flicks his eyes up to me, dispassionate. “The Citadel obviously has a vested interest in making sure you return safely and make sure C-137 is accounted for.”

“Then act like it.”

His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat, like he’s choking back an insult. Morty and Summer look at me with rounded, shocked eyes, but I pay them no attention as I stare Glasses Rick down. I’ve lived too long and done too much to put up with shit from someone who only _looks_ like my husband. Even if Ricardo were standing here, I wouldn’t let him slide with that kind of talk.

“As I was about to say,” Glasses Rick continues, “we can’t guarantee the accuracy of where C-137 is. Our instruments are calibrated to work with the smallest margin of error, but only within the confines of the Curve. Beyond that, we could be off by a matter of a couple feet or a few miles. Besides that, the particular pocket of space we’ve isolated as containing C-137 appears to be giving off powerful electromagnetic interference.”

“So…?” Summer says.

“It means as soon as we fly into that pocket, all our communications will be scrambled,” I explain. “Our GPS system will go _loco_ , we won’t be able to call back here for help, and our ship defense mechanisms will more than likely be disabled. In other words, we’ll be flying in the dark.”

Glasses Rick nods. “Exactly. The ship you’ll be using will give off a signal as soon as you reach the pocket’s coordinates to let us know you made it there. Other than that, you’ll be on your own.”

“B-but what if we need help?” Morty pipes up. “You’re gonna send us out there with no idea what could be waiting for us along with Rick? What if we get ambushed?”

“A distress signal is timed to broadcast if the ship doesn’t detect your presence inside the cabin within, what, an Earth-hour? Our team thinks that should be sufficient time to extract C-137 from wherever he is and return to your ship safely.”

How they’ve magically calculated this to be the appropriate amount of time to save Ricardo when they can’t determine precisely where he is in this damn pocket is a mystery to me. I’m not about to question this _pendejo_ any further, though. We’re closer than ever to finding Ricardo. Morty and Summer are about to see their grandfather again.

_A caballo regalado no se le mira el diente._

We’re given more details on our ship’s specs by a Morty who’s sweating to pieces. A Rick who looks far too excited about playing with guns shows us every weapon the Citadel is supplying to us—no personal weapons allowed, which makes me groan. The voyage won’t be a long one, but we get a list of every bit of food stocked in the mini-pantry in case we get hungry. I’ve got to say, they’ve thought of everything. Everything, that is, except the answer to the one question that’s been gnawing my brain.

What the hell are we getting ourselves into?

The farewell party is essentially all the Ricks and Mortys in the command center waving goodbye to us as the hangar doors slide apart and the ship’s engines hum to life. I don’t feel like waving back. In fact, part of me wants to jump out of the emergency exit in back and drift out into the inky blackness. Let Morty and Summer find Ricardo while I float among the stars. What would Ricardo want with me now, anyway? We have no idea what condition we’re going to find him in. Maybe he won’t remember me. Maybe that would be for the better.

“Hey. Leona?”

I startle out of my mental spiral, jerk away from where I was staring out into space. Summer stands at my shoulder, a can of Coke in one hand. She’s dressed in the black tactical suit the Citadel gave each of us despite the fact that the ship’s AI calculated us to be hours away from our destination. “What is it?” I ask her.

Summer sits down in the chair next to mine and spins it so we face each other. “Morty fell asleep back there, so I thought you and I could talk. Y’know. Kill time, shoot the breeze, whatever you want to call it.”

“Didn’t think you’d be open to conversation, considering how much you avoided me back in the apartment.” That came out a lot more like an accusation than I meant it to, but there’s a point to be made. Except for the brief time when we waited for Morty to return, Summer and I were rarely in the same room together. Like I said earlier, I gave up sticking my neck out to get to know her if she wouldn’t come to me on her own.

“Yeah. I’m sorry about that. I mean…God, so much has _happened._ ” She rakes her fingers back through her hair to her ponytail. “I think I’m a little, what’s the word, shell-shocked? And I know you took care of Morty when I couldn’t, and I can never thank you enough for that, so I should show you some more gratitude than I probably have been.”

“ _Nieta_ , I’ve been holding you to unfair standards.” I have, truly. It’s hard for me to remember that Morty is only fifteen, and Summer is two years older, according to Morty. When I started handling all the bizarre shit the multiverse could fling at me, I at least had the expertise of over four decades of life on Earth behind me. _Dios_ , they’re so _young._ “I owe you an apology, too. _Lo siento._ ”

“Apology accepted.” Summer smiles at me over the silver rim of her Coke can. “We have to trust each other, right? Who knows what’s waiting for us on the other end of this.”

“Indeed.”

We sit quietly for a bit, the stars drifting past us. Summer slurps from her Coke can, and I desperately want to get up and fetch a can for myself, but I’m worried about breaking the fragile rapport we have here. Instead, I kick off the floor with my good foot and spin in lazy circles, around and around. The ship becomes a gentle blur before my eyes, the stars outside blending into smooth white plastic and glinting chrome.

“Do you think there’s a point to anything?”

I pause my spinning to look at Summer. “Come again?”

“Grandpa Rick gave us these goggles one day when he was messing around with the cable box. He told us they showed us different alternate realities. Anyway, it turns out there are tons of realities where Mom never got pregnant at seventeen. _Then_ my parents told me that the only reason I exist in my reality is because they got a flat tire on the way to the abortion clinic…”

Abortion clinic? That must have happened after I left. But my God, to say that to your own daughter. Who the hell says something like that to their own daughter? It had to be Jerry who said it. _Puto._ I raised Beth better than that.

“I wanted to run away,” Summer continues, “but Morty caught me. That was the day he explained that he wasn’t the Morty I knew, that he came from another dimension. The Citadel didn’t freak me out that much because of that. Then he said, ‘Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everyone is gonna die. Come watch TV?’ There’s been a lot of messed-up stuff that’s happened in my life, Leona, but Morty telling me that? That was truly fucked up.”

She sighs heavily. “So I guess what I’m getting at is, do you think there’s a point to any of this? Is rescuing Grandpa Rick the right thing to do? I mean, can we even know if there’s a right and wrong thing to do if there’s no reason behind anything in the multiverse?”

There’s an unspoken question, one that I might only be hearing thanks to mental projection. _You’ve been out here for nearly eighteen years hunting down your estranged husband. Tell me, has it all been worth it? If the multiverse can’t justify what it is you’re doing, then who are you to justify it? Can you even remember why you are here?_

Okay, that was more than one question. But I can’t continue this line of self-interrogation. Summer is sitting there, waiting for a pile of answers from me. _Dios_ , is this what been old is like? Young people in their terror seek you out because they believe age equals wisdom, and they hope you hold the knowledge they desperately need so they don’t have to make any mistakes and learn for themselves? I want a refund. I’m not ready for this.

It’s my turn to sigh. I can only hope that what I’m about to say doesn’t damage Summer any more than anything else she’s already heard.

“It’s sad to see my husband has infected the minds of youth with his defeatist, nihilistic outlook,” I start. “And before you interrupt and say that’s not his way of thinking and you heard it from Morty,” because I can see from the way her mouth is twitching that she’s aching to deny it, “remember. I’ve known Ricardo for over half my life, and I know Morty…modestly well. I know him enough to realize something like that just doesn’t fall out of the boy’s mouth. He had to have absorbed the attitude somewhere.”

I lean back further in my chair and cross my legs stiffly. Summer is seeking wisdom from me—might as well look the part of omniscient, confident grandmother. “You want to know why we do anything if there’s no inherent point behind it? Because _we_ decided there was a point behind it. Us. No one else. It’s so easy to look at yourself in relation to the universe and say, ‘I’m so small, so inconsequential. Nothing I could ever say or do could possibly be important.’ It’s so easy to pretend consequences can’t apply to you when you’re a speck in the infinite cosmos. What you don’t realize is you aren’t detached. You are connected to everything, more so than you can even imagine. You aren’t alone.”

“So, you’re right. The multiverse couldn’t care less whether Ricardo was rescued by his grandchildren or spent the rest of his life rotting away in intergalactic prison. But because we chose to believe he was important to us, we decided to pull him back into our lives. For better or for worse.” A smile flits onto my face. “Strangely enough, all three of us had the same reason to break him out.”

“Oh yeah?” Summer raises her eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“Love.”

“Are you _kidding_ me right now?!”

“Write it off as hippie-drippy bullshit if you want. I’m a child of the 1960s, remember. Peace and love and all that.” I flash Summer a cheesy peace sign just to drive the point home. “ _En serio_ , though. You and Morty started on your journey out of the familial love you have for Ricardo. I went out looking—”

 “Because you want to get into his pants again, right?”

 “Because I am his wife and the love we share runs deep! Get your head out of the gutter, _nina_!”

“Do I need to remind you that you were half-naked and ready to have sex with some weird copy of Grandpa Rick when we first met?”

 I cross my arms and paste an exaggerated frown on my face. “Well-played.”

“I know.” Jesus, Summer has the same smirk as he does. “I learned how to win verbal spars from the best.”

“You do understand what I said, though, right? About importance and purpose? We, and we alone, get to choose what that means for each of us.”

The smirk disappears from Summer’s face as soon as it arrived. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I do,” she says thoughtfully. “That makes…I dunno. Makes every little argument, every big fight, every war back home on Earth feel so petty. And yet so much bigger, too.”

“Welcome to my world.” I pivot my chair to face out at the stars again, feeling more at peace than I have in years. Is this what passing on wisdom to the youth is like? I should do it more often.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is a reference to The Beatles song, "Across the Universe." I listened to it quite a bit to get the mellow, meditative, and borderline philosophical mood behind this chapter. Hopefully that came through for you, the reader.
> 
> Another title I'd considered was "Dispatched," and my original outline called for both Leona and Rick's voices to appear in this chapter. However, when I finished writing Leona and Summer's conversation, I realized a voice switch to Rick would be too jarring and would ultimately mess with the pacing. You'll get to see his perspective at the beginning of the next chapter. 
> 
> In case the bit where Morty and Leona are talking about coffee doesn't make sense: it's Leona's discreet way of assessing how distressed or anxious Morty is. If Morty asks for coffee, she knows something is wrong. The number of sugars/cream reflects how serious the problem is. It's a method I borrowed from "The Rules for Lovers", a fic from another fandom I've launched myself into, although in that fic one character asks another to rate their favorite dish on a scale of 1 to 10. 
> 
> Leona and Summer's conversation is part of what took this chapter FOREVER to write. It's a scene that I've been planning since the very beginning, not unlike the entirety of Chapter 14, and sometimes you build and plan something so much that absolutely nothing feels right once you get it down on paper. Even now I wonder whether I got it exactly right. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, as always. Even though Season 3 has come and gone, I want to give this fic the proper ending it deserves. And I want to give you, my dear reader, the ending that you deserve. 
> 
> Next time: they've got us surrounded, we're in their sights, but they're not taking us alive.


	19. A Final Note

Hey, everyone. I’ve never been a fan of author’s notes like these, because I always got my hopes up for a new chapter only to find that the author, for one reason or another, was no longer continuing a work that I really loved. However, the time has come for me to write one of those notes.

I was a much different person when I began _Jailbreak_ compared to who I am today. Back when I started writing it over a year and a half ago, I was in college, freshly engrossed with _Rick and Morty,_ and had plenty of passion to invest in a multi-chapter fic about rescuing one of the main characters from intergalactic prison. Nowadays, I’m a college graduate with a (somewhat) professional job, and I’m not quite as interested in R&M as I once was. And because I’m not nearly as interested in the show as I once was, I don’t have the passion to finish _Jailbreak_ like I once did.

So I’ve been stuck between a rock and a hard place for months. I wasn’t sure whether I should push through and give _Jailbreak_ the ending it deserves, or abandon the work where it was. I ultimately chose the latter, because I realized that if I pushed, you as my reader would get a half-baked end product that I wouldn’t be very proud of and you likely wouldn’t be happy with. And with a story as emotional as I’ve made _Jailbreak_ to be (and as I hope it comes across to you), it deserves a great conclusion that I just can’t deliver like I once could.

I hope you all will understand. Know that this breaks my heart—I hate letting go of something that I’ve put so much of myself into. But sometimes we need to let go of the things we’ve made in order to move forward.

Thank you for reading.

 

Happy trails,

Jess


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